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THEOSOPHY 


AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SUPERSENSIBLE 
KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD AND THE 
DESTINATION OF MAN 


BY 


RUDOLF STEINER 


TRANSLATED WITH THE PERMISSION 
OF THE AUTHOR 
FROM THE THIRD GERMAN EDITION 


BY 
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RAND McNALLY & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 
CHICAGO IgIo NEW YORK 


Copyright, 1910, 


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CONTENTS > 3 x 
PAGE 
Translator’s Foreword . ix 
Prejace to the First Edition . xi 
Preface to the Third Edition XV 
Introduction hee I 
CHAPTER 
I. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE 

HUMAN BEING 9 
1. THe CorPOREAL BEING oF Man . 15 
2. THE Sout BEING oF MAN 18 
3. THE SPIRITUAL BEING oF MAN 20 
4. Bopy, Sout, AND SPIRIT 22 

Il. RE-EMBODIMENT OF THE SPIRIT 
AND DESTINY 59 
RE-INCARNATION AND KARMA 59 
III. THE THREE WORLDS 87 
1. THE SouL WORLD 87 

2. THE SOUL IN THE SOUL Wawen AFTER 
DEATH. 109 
3. THE SPIRIT-LAND 129 

4. THE SPIRIT IN THE SPIRIT-LAND AFTER 
DEATH. 141 

5. THe PuysicaL wees AND ITS Con- 

NECTION WITH THE SOUL AND 
SPIRIT-LANDS Vie 0 leah Ore 

6. THouGHT-FoRMS AND THE HUMAN 
AURA 178 
Iv. THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE 195 
Notes and Amplifications 225 


vii 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Duke University Libraries 


https://archive.org/details/theosophy01 stei_0 


TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD 


IT is significant of the movement of thought 
in our time that, although the previous works 
of Rudolf Steiner, Ph.D. Vienna, such as 
his penetrating and suggestive “Erkenntniss 
Theorie” (Theory of Knowledge), his works 
in the field of philosophy such as “Wahrheit 
und Wissenschaft’ (Truth and Science), and 
his volumes on the natural science of Goethe, 
are well known in Germany, it is another class 
of books by him, “Die Mystik” (Mysticism), 
“Das Christentum als Mystische Tatsache” 
(Christianity as a Fact in Mysticism), and 
his distinctively theosophic writings, which 
are the first to be called for by foreign readers 
in their own language. 

This work, though now appearing for the 
first time in English dress, has not only passed 
into three editions in Germany, but has been 
translated into Russian, Swedish, Dutch, 
Czechish, and Italian, while a French trans- 
lation is being prepared. 

* * * 
It were perhaps well to mention that in 
1x 


2 TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD 


this work the words “know” and “knowledge,” 
when used in reference to the supersensible 
worlds, involve actual experience of them 
gained by man through his higher organs of 
perception. 

The names chosen by the author to describe 
the higher bodies of man, and other theosophic 
facts, have been, as far as possible, retained 
here. Readers will find that they revert with 
primitive strength to the ancient power of 
names, and are word pictures and also 
mnemonics of what they represent. They thus 
constitute distinct forces too valuable to be 
withheld from the English reading public. 

Grateful acknowledgment must be expressed 
here to I. M. M. for her chivalrous help— 
which indeed made this translation possible— 
and to others who have rendered invaluable 
and willing assistance. E. D.S. 


PREFACE 
TO THE FIRST EDITION 


THIs book will give a description of some of 
the regions of the supersensible world. The 
reader who is willing to admit the existence 
of the sensible world only will regard this 
delineation as a mere unreal production of the 
imagination. He, however, who looks for 
paths that lead beyond this world of the senses 
will soon learn to understand that human life 
only gains in worth and significance through 
sight into another world. Such a man will not, 
as many fear, be estranged from the “real” 
world through this new power of vision. For 
only through it does he learn to stand fast and 
firm in this life. He learns to know the CAUSES 
of life, while without it he gropes like a blind 
man through their EFFECTS. Only through the 
understanding of the supersensible does the 
sensible “real” acquire meaning. One there- 
fore becomes more, and not less, fit for life 
through this understanding. Only he who 


X1 


xii PREFACE 


understands life can become a truly practical 
man. 

The author of this book describes nothing 
to which he cannot bear witness from experi- 
ence, that kind of experience which one has in 
these regions. Only that which in this sense 
has been personally experienced will be dealt 
with. 

One cannot read this book as one is accus- 
tomed ordinarily to read books at the present 
day. In certain respects every page, and even 
many a sentence, will have to be WORKED OUT 
by the reader. This has been intentionally 
aimed at. For only in this way can the book 
become to the reader what it ought to become. 
He who merely reads it through will not have 
read it at all. Its truths must be experienced, 
lived. Only in this sense has theosophy any 
value. 

The book cannot be judged from the stand- 
point of science if the point of view adopted 
in forming such a judgment is not gained from 
the book itself. If the critic will adopt this 
point of view, he will certainly see that the 
presentation of the facts given in this book will 
in no way conflict with the truly scientific 


PREFACE xiii 


methods. The author is satisfied that he has 
been on the alert not to come into conflict with 
his own scientific scrupulousness, even by a 
single word. 

Those who feel more drawn to another 
method of searching after the truths here set 
forth will find gne in my “Philosophie der 
Freiheit” (Philosophy of Freedom), Berlin, 
1892... The lines of thought taken in these two 
books, though different, lead to the same goal. 
For the understanding of the one the other is 
by no means necessary, although undoubtedly 
helpful for some persons. 

He who looks for “ultimate” truths in this 
book will, perhaps, lay it aside unsatisfied. 
The primary intention of the author has been 
to give the FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS underlying 
the whole domain of theosophy. It lies in the 
very nature of man to ask at once about the 
beginning and the end of the world, the pur- 
pose of existence, and the nature and being of 
God. Anyone, however, who looks, not for 
mere phrases and concepts for the INTELLECT, 
but for a real understanding of life, knows that 
in a work which deals with the elements of 
wisdom, things MAY not be said which belong 


XIV PREFACE 


to the higher stages of wisdom. It is, indeed, 
only through a comprehension of these ele- 
ments that it becomes clear how higher ques- 
tions should be asked. In another work form- 
ing a continuation of this one, namely, in the 
author’s “Die Geheimwissenschaft im Umriss” 
(An Outline of Occult Science), further par- 
ticulars on the subject here dealt with will be 
found. 


PREFACE 
TO THE THIRD EDITION 


ON the appearance of the second edition of 
this book occasion was taken to preface a few 
remarks which may also be said with regard 
to this third edition. ‘“Amplifications and 
extensions,” which seem to me important for 
the more exact description of what is being 
presented, have again been inserted ; but in no 
case have essential alterations of what was con- 
tained in the first and second editions seemed 
necessary. What was said on the first appear- 
ance of the book regarding its aim, and what 
was added to this in the second edition, also 
require, at present, no alteration. In the pref- 
ace to the second edition the following sup- 
plementary remarks were inserted. 

Anyone who at the present time gives a 
description of supersensible facts ought to be 
quite clear on two points. The first is that our 
age REQUIRES the cultivation of the different 
branches of supersensible knowledge. The 


XV 


xvi PREFACE 


other is that the intellectual and spiritual life 
of the day is full of ideas and feelings which 
make such a description appear to many an 
absolute chaos of fantastic notions and dreams. 
The present age requires knowledge of the 
supersensible because all that a man can come 
to know by current methods about the world 
and life arouses in him numerous questions 
which can only be answered by means of super- 
sensible truths. For one ought not to deceive 
oneself in regard to the fact that the informa- 
tion concerning the fundamental truths of 
existence given within the intellectual and 
spiritual currents of to-day is, for the souls that 
feel deeply, a source not of answers but of 
QUESTIONS regarding the great problems of 
the universe and of life. Some people may, 
for a time, hold firmly to the opinion that they 
can find a solution of the problems of existence 
within the “results of strictly scientific facts,” 
and within the conclusions of this or that 
thinker of the day. But when the soul goes 
into those depths into which it must go if it is 
to understand itself, what at first seemed to 
be a solution becomes evident as being only the 
incentive to the true question. And an answer 


PREFACE XVii 


to THIS question is not intended to be brought 
forward merely as a response to human curios- 
ity; on it, rather, depend the inner calm and 
completeness of the soul life. The attainment 
of such an answer does not satisfy merely the 
thirst for knowledge; it makes a man capable 
of practical work and fitted for the duties of 
life, while the lack of a solution of these ques- 
tions lames his soul, and finally his body also. 
In fact, the knowledge of the supersensible is 
not merely something that meets a theoretical 
requirement; it supplies a method for leading 
a truly practical life. Exactly on account of 
the nature of the intellectual and spiritual life 
of the present time, therefore, theosophy is a 
domain of knowledge indispensable for our 
age. 
On the other hand, it is an evident fact that 
many to-day reject most strongly what they 
most sorely need. The dominating influence 
exercised by many theories built up on the 
basis of “‘exact scientific experience” is so great 
on some people that they cannot do otherwise 
than regard the contents of a book like this as 
a boundless absurdity. The exponent of super- 
sensible truths can view such facts entirely 


XViii PREFACE 


free from any illusions. People will certainly 
be prone to demand from him that he should 
give “irrefutable proofs” for what he states. 
But they do not realize that in doing this they 
are the victims of a misconception, for they 
demand, although unconsciously, not the 
proofs lying within the things themselves, but 
those which they personally are willing to rec- 
ognize or are in a condition to recognize. The 
author of this work knows that it contains noth- 
ing that any person taking his stand on the 
basis of the natural science of the present day 
will be unable to accept. He knows that all 
the requirements of natural science can be com- 
plied with, and FOR THIS VERY REASON the 
method adopted here of presenting the facts 
of the supersensible world supplies its own 
justification. In fact, the manner in which a 
true natural science approaches and deals with 
a subject is the very one in full harmony with 
this presentation. And anyone accustomed to 
think in that manner will be moved by many a 
discussion to feel in the way characterized in 
Goethe’s deep and true saying, “‘A false teach-. 
ing does not offer any opening to refutation, 
for it is, in fact, based on the conviction that 


PREFACE xix 


the false is true.’ Discussions are fruitless 
with those who allow only such proofs to weigh 
with them as fit in with their own manner of 


thinking. He who knows the true essence of 
what is called “proving” a matter sees clearly 


that the human soul finds truth by other ways 
than discussion. It is with these thoughts in 


mind that the author hands over this book for 
publication in its second edition. 

Unfortunately, too long a time has elapsed 
between the date at which the second edition 
was exhausted and the appearance of this third 
edition. Pressing work of other kinds, in the 
domain to which this book is devoted, delayed 
the author in the examination he wished to give 
to the book, and prevented its appearing as 
soon as he had hoped. 





RUDOLF STEINER. 


THEOSOPHY 


INTRODUCTION 


WHEN JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE, in the 
autumn of 1813, gave to the world his “Intro- 
duction to the Science of Knowledge” as the 
ripe fruit of a life wholly devoted to the serv- 
ice of truth, he said, at the very beginning: 
“This science presupposes an entirely new 
inner sense organ or instrument, by means of 
which there is revealed a new world which 
does not exist for the ordinary man.” And he 
proceeded to give the following comparison 
to show how incomprehensible this doctrine of 
his must be when judged by means of concep- 
tions founded on the ordinary senses: “Think 
of a world of people born blind, who therefore 
know only those objects and relations which 
exist through the sense of touch. Go among 
them and speak to them of colors and the other 

I 


2 THEOSOPHY 


relations which exist only through light and 
for the sense of sight. Either you convey noth- 
ing to their minds, and this is the more fortu- 
nate if they tell you so, for you will in that way 
quickly notice the mistake and, if unable to 
open their eyes, will cease the useless speak- 
ing. . . .’ Now those who speak to people 
about such things as Fichte deals with in this 
instance find themselves only too often in a 
position like that of a man who can see among 
the born blind. But these are things that refer 
to man’s true being and highest goal, and to 
believe it necessary “to cease the useless speak- 
ing’ would amount to despairing of humanity. 
On the contrary, one should not for one 
moment doubt the possibility of opening the 
eyes of everyone to these things, provided that 
he is in earnest in the matter. On this suppo- 
sition have all those written and spoken who 
felt that within themselves the “inner sense- 
instrument” had grown by which they were 
able to know the true nature and being of man, 
which is hidden from the outer senses. This 
is why from the most ancient times such a 
“Flidden Wisdom” has been again and again 
spoken of. Those who have grasped some- 


INTRODUCTION 3 


thing of it feel just as sure of their possession 
as people with normal eyes feel sure that they 
possess the conception of color. For them this 
“Hidden Wisdom” requires no “proof.” 
They know also that it requires no proof for 
any other person who, like themselves, has 
unfolded the “higher sense.”” Such a one can 
speak as a traveler can about America to peo- 
ple who have not themselves seen that country, 
but who can form a conception of it because 
they would see all that he has seen if the oppor- 
tunity presented itself to them. 

But not only to such has the investigator of 
the higher truth to speak. He must address 
his words to all mankind. For he has to make 
known things that concern all humanity. 
Indeed he knows that without a knowledge of 
these things no one can, in the true sense of the 
word, be a “human being.” And he speaks to 
all mankind because he knows that there are 
different grades of understanding for what he 
has to say. He knows that even those who are 
still far from the moment in which they will 
themselves be capable of spiritual investiga- 
tion can bring a certain measure of under- 
standing to meet him. For the FEELING for 


fo 


(3 THEOSOPHY 


truth and the power of UNDERSTANDING it is 
inherent in EVERY human being. And to this 
UNDERSTANDING, which can flash forth in 
every healthy soul, he in the first place 
addresses himself. He also knows that in this 
UNDERSTANDING there is a force which, little 
by little, must lead to the higher grades of 
KNOWLEDGE. This feeling, which perhaps at 
first sees NOTHING AT ALL of that which is told 
it, is itself the magician which opens the “eye 
of the spirit.” In darkness this feeling stirs; 
the soul does not SEE, but through this feeling 
it is seized by the POWER of THE TRUTH; and 
then the truth will gradually draw nearer to 
the soul and open in it the “higher sense.” 
For one person it may take a longer, for 
another a shorter time, but everyone who has 
patience and endurance reaches this goal. For 
although not every physical eye can be oper- 
ated on, EVERY SPIRITUAL EYE can be opened, 
and when it will be opened is only a question 
of time. 

Erudition and scientific training are not 
essential to the unfolding of this “higher 
sense.” It can be developed in the simple- 
minded person just as in the scientist of high 


INTRODUCTION 5 


standing. Indeed, what is often called at the 
present time “the only true science” can, for 
the attainment of this goal, be a hindrance 
rather than a help. For this science too often 
permits to be considered “real” only what is 
perceptible to the ordinary senses. And how- 
ever great its merit is in regard to the knowl- 
edge of THAT reality, it creates at the same 
time a mass of prejudices which close the 
approach to higher realities. 

In objection to what is said here it is often 
brought forward that “insurmountable limits” 
have been once and forever set to human 
knowledge, and that, since one cannot pass 
beyond these limits, all branches of investiga- 
tion and knowledge which do not take them 
into account must be rejected. And a person 
who wishes to make assertions about things 
which many regard as proved to lie beyond 
the limits that have been set to human capac- 
ities of knowledge, is looked upon as highly 
presumptuous. Those who make such objec- 
tions entirely disregard the fact that a DEVEL- 
OPMENT of the human powers of knowledge 
has to precede the higher knowledge. What 
lies beyond the limits of knowledge BEFORE 








6 THEOSOPHY 


such a development is, after the awakening of 
faculties slumbering in each human being, 
entirely WITHIN the realm of knowledge. One 
point in this connection must, indeed, not be 
neglected. One could say, “Of what use is it 
to speak to people about things for which their 
powers of knowledge are not yet awakened, 
and which are therefore still closed to them?” 
But that is also the wrong way to look at it. 
One requires certain faculties to FIND OUT the 
things referred to; but if, after having been 
found out, they are made known, EVERY PER- 
SON can understand who is willing to bring to 
bear upon them unprejudiced logic and a 
healthy instinct for truth. In this book the 
things made known are of no other kind than 
such as can produce the impression that 
through them the riddle of human life and the 
phenomena of the world find a satisfying 
explanation. This it can do on anyone who 
allows thinking that looks at all sides of a sub- 
ject and is unclouded by prejudice, and a feel- 
ing for truth that is free, and sets no reserves, 
to take effect. Let one merely place himself in 
the attitude of asking, “If the things that are 
asserted here are true, do they afford a satisfy- 


INTRODUCTION 7 


ing explanation of life?” and one will find that 
the life of each human being supplies the con- 
firmation. 

In order to be a “teacher” in these higher 
regions of existence, it is by no means sufficient 
that a person has developed the sense for them. 
For that purpose “science” is necessary, just as 
much as it is necessary for the teacher’s calling 
in the region of ordinary reality. “Higher 
seeing” alone makes a “‘knower” in the spiritual 
just as little as healthy sense organs make a 
“scholar” in regard to the sensible realities. 
And because in truth ALL reality, the lower 
and the higher spiritual, are only two sides of 
one and the same fundamental essence, anyone 
who is unlearned in the lower branches of 
knowledge will as a rule remain so in regard 
to the higher. This fact creates a feeling of 
responsibility that is immeasurable in him 
who, by a spiritual call, is destined to be a 
teacher in the spiritual regions of existence. 
It creates in him humility and reservedness. 
But it should deter no one from occupying 
himself with the higher truths, not even him 
whose other circumstances of life afford no 
opportunity for the study of ordinary science. 


8 THEOSOPHY 


For one can, indeed, fulfill one’s task as a 
human being without understanding anything 
of botany, zoology, mathematics, and other 
sciences; but_one cannot, in the full sense of 
the word, be a “human” being without having, 
in n_some ‘way or other, come near to _a_percep- 
tion of Se and destination of of man 

The highest to ae a man is alike to look 
up he calls the “Divine.” And he has in some 
way or other to bring his highest destination 
into connection with this Divinity. For this 
reason the higher \ wisdom which reveals to ea 
very well: be called “Divine Wisdom,” or 
THEOSOPHY.  ——™ ae 

From the point of view here indicated there 
will be sketched in this book an outline of the 
theosophical interpretation of the universe. 
The writer of it will present nothing that is 
not a FACT for him, in the same sense as an 
experience of the outer world is a fact for eyes 
and ears and the ordinary intelligence. Indeed, 
experiences will be dealt with which become 
accessible to each person who is determined to 
tread the “path of knowledge” described in a 
special section of this work. 


CHAPTER I 


THE CONSTITUTION OF THE 
HUMAN BEING 


THE following words of Goethe’s describe, 
in a beautiful manner, the starting point of 
one of the ways by which the constitution of 
man can be known: “When a person first 
becomes aware of the objects surrounding him, 
he observes them in relation to himself, and 
rightly so, for his whole fate depends on 
whether they please or displease him, attract 
or repel, help or harm him. This quite natural 
way of looking at and judging things appears 
to be as easy as it is necessary. Nevertheless, 
a person is exposed through it to a thousand 
errors which often cause him shame and 
embitter his life. A far more difficult task do 
those undertake whose keen desire for knowl- 
edge urges them to strive to observe the objects 
of nature in themselves and in their relations 
to each other, for they soon miss the gauge 
which helped them when they, as persons, 


9 


10 THEOSOPHY 


regard the objects in reference to THEMSELVES 
personally. They lack the gauge of pleasure 
and displeasure, attraction and repulsion, use- 
fulness and harmfulness; this gauge they have 
to renounce entirely. They should, as dispas- 
sionate and, so to speak, divine beings, seek and 
examine what is, and not what gratifies. Thus 
the true botanist should not be affected either 
by the beauty or by the usefulness of the plants. 
He has to study their structure and their rela- 
tion to the rest of the vegetable kingdom; and 
just as they are one and all enticed forth and 
shone upon by the sun, so should he with an 
equable, quiet glance look at and survey them 
all and obtain the gauge for this knowledge, 
the data for his deductions, not out of himself, 
but from within the circle of things which he 
observes.” 

The thought thus expressed by Goethe 
directs attention to three kinds of things. 
First, the objects concerning which informa- 
tion continually flows to man through the 
doors of his senses, those that he touches, smells, 
tastes, hears, and sees. Second, the impressions 
which these make on him, and which record 
themselves as his pleasure and displeasure, his 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 11 


desire or abhorrence, according as he finds one 
harmonious, another inharmonious, one useful, 
another harmful. Third, the knowledge and 
the experiences which he, as a so-to-speak 
“divine being,” gains concerning the objects— 
the secrets of their activities and their being 
which unveil themselves to him. 

These three regions are distinctly separate in 
human life. And man thereby becomes aware 
that he is interwoven with the world in a three- 
fold way. The first way is something that he 
finds present and accepts as a given fact. 
Through the second way he makes the world 
into his own affair, into something that has a 
significance for himself. The third way he 
regards as a goal toward which he has unceas- 
ingly to strive. 

Why does the world appear to man in this 
threefold way? The simplest consideration 
will explain that. I cross a meadow covered 
with flowers. The flowers make their colors 
known to me through my eyes. That is the 
fact which J accept as given. I rejoice in the 
splendor of the colors. Through this I turn 
the fact into an affair of my own. By means 
of my feelings I link the flowers with my own 


12 THEOSOPHY 


existence. A year after I go again over the 
same meadow. Other flowers are there. New 
joy arises in me through them. My joy of the 
former year will appear as a memory. It is in 
me; the object which aroused it in me is gone. 
But the flowers which I now see are of the 
same species as those I saw the year before; 
they have grown in accordance with the same 
laws as did the others. If I have enlightened 
myself regarding this species and these laws, 
I find them again in the flowers of this year as 
I recognized them in those of the former year. 
And I shall perhaps muse as follows: “The 
flowers of last year are gone; my joy in them 
remains only in my remembrance. It is bound 
up with MY existence alone. That, however, 
which I recognized in the flowers of the former 
year and recognize again this year, will remain 
as long as such flowers grow. That is some- 
thing that revealed itself to me, but which is 
not dependent on my existence in the same way 
asmy joyis. My feelings of joy remain in me; 
the laws, the BEING of the flowers, remain out- 
side of me in the world.” 

Man continually links himself in this three- 
fold way with the things of the world. One 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 13 


should not for the time being read anything 
into this fact, but merely take it as it presents 
itself. It makes it evident that man has THREE 


SIDES TO HIS NATURE. This and nothing else 
will for the present be indicated here by the 
three words BODY, SOUL, and SPIRIT. He who 
connects any preconceived meanings, or even 
hypotheses, with these three words will neces- 
sarily misunderstand the following explana- 
tions. By BODY is here meant that by which the 
things—in—the-environment_of_a_man_ reveal 
themselves to him, as in the example just cited, 


the flowers of the pieadors By the word SOUL 
is signixed that k by which he links the things to 


his_own being, through which he experiences 
pleasure and displeasure, desire and aversion, 


joy and sorrow. By SPIRIFis-meant that which 
becomes manifest in him when, a8 Goethe ex- 
pressed it, he looks at things as ‘‘a so-to-speak 
divine pea In this sense the human being 
consists of BODY, SOUL, and SPIRIT. 

Through his Ae man is able to place him- 
self for the time being in connection with the 
things; through his soul he retains in himself 
the impressions which they make on him; 
through his spirit there reveals itself to him 


14 THEOSOPHY 


what the things retain in themselves. Only 
when one observes man in these three aspects 
can one hope to gain light on his whole being. 
For these three aspects show him to be related 
in a threefold way to the rest of the world. 
Through his body he is related to the objects 
which present themselves to his senses from 
without. The materials from the outer world 
compose this body of his; and the forces of the 
outer world work also in it. And just as he 
observes the things of the outer world with his 
senses, he can also observe his own bodily exist- 
ence. But it is impossible to observe the soul 
existence in the same way. All occurrences 
connected with my body can be perceived with 
my bodily senses. My likes and dislikes, my 
joy and pain, neither I nor anyone else can 
perceive with bodily senses. The region of the 
soul is one which is inaccessible to bodily per- 
ception. The bodily existence of a man is 
manifest to all eyes; the soul existence he car- 
ries within himself as HIS world. Through 
the SPIRIT, however, the outer world is revealed 
to him ina higher way. The mysteries of the 
outer world, indeed, unveil themselves in his 
inner being; but he steps in spirit out of him- 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 15 


self and lets the things speak about themselves, 
about that which has significance not for him 
but for THEM. Man looks up at the starry 
heavens; the delight his soul experiences 
belongs to him; the eternal laws of the stars 
which he comprehends in thought, in SPIRIT, 
belong not to him but to the stars themselves. 

Thus man is citizen of THREE WORLDS. 
Through his BoDy he belongs to the world 
which he perceives through his body; through 
his SOUL he constructs for himself his own 
world; through his SPIRIT a world reveals 
itself to him which is exalted above both the 
others. 

It is evident that because of the essential 
differences of these three worlds, one can 
obtain a clear understanding of them and of 
man’s share in them only by means of three 
different modes of observation. 


I. THE CORPOREAL BEING OF MAN 


One learns to know the body of man 
through the bodily senses. And the way of 
observing it can differ in no way from that 
by which one learns to know other objects per- 


ceived by the senses. As one observes min- 
3 


16 THEOSOPHY 


erals, plants, animals, so can one observe man 
also. He is related to these three forms of 
existence. Like the minerals he builds his 
body out of the materials in nature; like the 
plants he grows and propagates his species; 
he perceives the objects around him and, like 
the animals, forms on the basis of the impres- 
sions they make his inner experiences. One 
may therefore ascribe to man a mineral, a 
plant, and an animal existence. 

The difference in the structure of minerals, 
plants, and animals corresponds with these 
three forms of existence. And it is this struc- 
ture, this shape which one perceives through 
the senses, and which alone one can call body. 
But the human body is different from that of 
the animal. This difference everybody must 
recognize whatever may be his opinion in other 
respects regarding the relationship of man to 
animals. Even the most radical materialist 
who denies all soul will not be able to avoid 
agreeing with the following sentence which 
Carus utters in his “Organon der Natur und 
des Geistes”: “The finer, inner construction of . 
the nervous system, and especially of the brain, 
remains as yet an unsolved problem to the 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 17 


physiologist and the anatomist; but that this 
concentration of the structure increases more 
and more in the animal, and in man reaches a 
stage unequaled in any other being, is a fully 
established fact, a fact which is of the deepest 
significance in regard to the spiritual evolu- 
tion of man, of which, indeed, we may frankly 
say it is a sufficient explanation. Where, 
therefore, the structure of the brain has 
not developed properly, where its smallness 
and poverty show themselves, as in the case of 
microcephali and idiots, it goes without say- 
ing that one can as little expect the appearance 
of original ideas and of knowledge, as one can 
expect propagation of species in persons with 
completely stunted organs of generation. On 
the other hand, a strong and beautiful con- 
struction of the whole person, especially of the 
brain, will certainly not in itself take the place 
of genius, but it will at any rate supply the first 
and indispensable requirement for higher 
knowledge.” Just as one ascribes to the hu- 
man body the three forms of existence, min- 
eral, plant, animal, one must now ascribe to it 
yet a fourth, the distinctively HUMAN form. 
Through his mineral form of existence man 


18 THEOSOPHY 


is related to everything visible, through his 
plant- like form of existence to all beings that 
grow and propagate their species, through his 
animal existence to all those that perceive their 
surroundings, and by means of external im- 
pressions have inner experiences. Through 
his human form of existence he constitutes, 
even in regard to his body alone, a kingdom 
by himself. 


2. THE SOUL BEING OF MAN 


The soul being of man differs from his cor- 
porality through being his own inner world. 
This inner world peculiar to each person faces 
one the moment one directs one’s attention to 
the simplest sensation. One finds, in the first 
place, that no one can know if another person 
perceives even the simplest sensation in 
exactly the same way as one does oneself. It 
is known that there are people who are color- 
blind. They see things only in different 
shades of gray. Others are partially color- 
blind. They are unable, because of this, to 
perceive certain shades of colors. The pic- 
ture of the world which their eyes give them is 
different from that of so-called normal per- 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 19 


sons. And the same holds good in regard to 
the other senses. It will be seen, therefore, 
without further elaboration, that even simple 
sensations belong to the inner world. I can 
perceive with my bodily senses the red table 
which another person also perceives; but | 
cannot perceive his sensation _of—red.._One 
must therefore describe sensation as belonging 
to the SOUL. If one grasps this fact alone 
quite clearly, he will soon cease to regard inner 
experiences AS MERE brain processes or some- 
thing similar. The first result of sensation is 


FEELING. One’sensation causes man _ pleasure, 
another displeasure. These are_stirrings_of 
his inner, his soul life. Man creates in his 
feelings a second world in addition to that 
which works on him from without. And a 
third is added to this—the will. Through it 
man reacts on the outer world. And he 
thereby stamps the impress of his inner being 
on the outer world. The soul of man, as it 
were, flows outward in the activities of his 
will. The actions of the human being differ 
from the occurrences_of outer nature in that 
they bear the impress of his inner life. In this 
way the SOUL represents what is man’s own in 





20 THEOSOPHY 


contradistinction to the outer world. He 
receives from the outer world the incitements; 
but he creates, in responding to these incite- 
ments, a world of his own. The corporality 
becomes the foundation of the soul being of 
man. 


3. THE SPIRITUAL BEING OF MAN 


The soul being of man is not determined by 
the body alone. Man does not wander aim- 
lessly and without a goal from one sensation to 
another; neither does he act under the influ- 
ence of every casual incitement directed on 
him either from without or through the pro- 
cesses of his body. He THINKS about his 
perceptions and his acts. By thinking about 
his perceptions he gains knowledge of things; 
by thinking about his acts he introduces a rea- 
sonable coherence into his life. He knows 
also that he will fulfill his duty as a human 
being only when he lets himself be guided 
by CORRECT THINKING in knowledge as well 
as in acts. The soul of man, therefore, faces 
a twofold necessity. The laws of the body 
govern it in accordance with the necessities of — 
nature, but it allows itself to be governed by 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 21 


the laws which guide it to exact thinking 
because it voluntarily acknowledges their 
necessity. Nature subjects man to the laws of 
the change of matter, but he subjects himself 
to the laws of thought. By this means he 
makes himself a member of a higher order 
than that to which he belongs through his body. 
And this order is the SPIRITUAL. The soul is 
as different from the body as the body is differ- 
ent from the soul. So long as one speaks only 
of the particles of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, 
and oxygen which stir in the body, one has not 
the soul in view. The soul life begins only 
when within the motion of these particles sen- 
sation arises, and one can say: “I taste sweet- 
ness” or “I feel pleasure.” Just as little has 
one the SPIRITUAL in view when one considers 
merely the soul experiences which course 
through a man who gives himself over entirely 
to the outer world and his bodily life. Rather 
is this soul life merely the basis for the spirit- 
ual, just as the body is the basis of the soul life. 
The naturalist, or investigator of nature, has 
to do with the body, the investigator of the 
soul (the psychologist) with the soul, and the 
investigator of the spirit with the SPIRIT. To 


22 THEOSOPHY 


realize what one is in oneself, and thus become 
clear as to the difference between body, soul, 
and spirit, is a requirement which must be 
demanded from those who wish by thinking 
to enlighten themselves regarding the consti- 
tution of man. 


4. BODY, SOUL, AND SPIRIT 


Man can enlighten himself in a correct way 
concerning himself only when he grasps the 
significance of THINKING within his being. 
The brain is the bodily instrument for think- 
ing. Just as man can only see colors with a 
properly constructed eye, so the suitably con- 
structed brain serves him for thought. The 
whole body of man is so formed that it receives 
its crown in the organ of the spirit, the brain. 
One can understand the construction of the 
human brain only by observing it in relation 
to its task, which consists in being the instru- 
ment or tool for the thinking spirit. This is 
borne out by a comparative survey of the ani- 
mal world. Among amphibians we find the 
brain small in comparison with the spinal 
cord, in mammals it is proportionately larger, 
in man it is largest in comparison with the 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 23 


rest of the body. There are many prejudices 
prevalent regarding such statements about 
THINKING as are brought forward here. 
Many persons are inclined to undervalue 
THINKING, and to place higher the “warm life 
of feeling” or “emotion.” Some, indeed, say 
it is not by “dry thinking” but by warmth of 
feeling, by the immediate power of “‘the emo- 
tions,” that one raises oneself to higher knowl- 
edge. Persons who speak thus fear to blunt 
the feelings by clear thinking. This certainly 
results from the ordinary thinking that refers 
only to matters of utility. But in the case of 
thoughts that lead to higher regions of exist- 
ence, the opposite is the result. There is no 
feeling and no enthusiasm to be compared 
with the sentiments of warmth, beauty, and 
exaltation which are enkindled through the 
pure, crystal-clear thoughts which refer to the 
higher worlds. For the highest feelings are, 
as a matter of fact, not those which come “‘of 
themselves,” but those which are gained by 
energetic and persevering thinking. 

The human body has a construction adapted 
to THINKING. The same materials and forces 
which are present in the mineral kingdom are 


24 THEOSOPHY 


so combined in the human body that by means 
of these combinations thought can manifest 
itself. This mineral construction, formed as 
a suitable instrument for its work, will be 
called in the following pages the PHYSICAL 
BODY of man. (In theosophical literature it is 
called “Sthula sharira.’’) 

This organized mineral construction with 
the brain as its center comes into existence by 
PROPAGATION, and reaches its developed form 
through GROWTH. Propagation and growth 
man has in common with plants and animals. 
Propagation and growth distinguish what is 
living from the lifeless mineral. What lives 
comes forth from the living by means of the 
germ. The descendant follows the fore- 
fathers in the succession of the living. The 
forces through which a mineral originates we 
must look for in the materials themselves 
which compose it. A quartz crystal is formed 
by the forces united in it, and inherent in the 
silicon and oxygen. The forces which shape 
an oak tree we must look for in a roundabout 
way in the germ in the mother and father 
plants. The FORM of the oak is preserved 
through propagation from forefathers to 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 25 


descendants. There are INNER DETERMINING 
FORCES INNATE in all that is living. It was a 
crude view of nature which held that lower 
animals, even fishes, could evolve out of mud. 
The form of the living passes itself on by 
means of HEREDITY. The manner in which a 
living being develops depends on what father 
and mother beings it has sprung from or, in 
other words, on the SPECIES to which it 
belongs. The materials of which it is com- 
posed change continually; the SPECIES remains 
during life, and is transmitted to the descend- 
ants. Thus the SPECIES is that which condi- 
tions the organizing and molding of the 
materials. This species-forming force will 
here be called LIFE-FORCE (in theosophical lit- 
erature it is called “Prana”’). Just as the 
mineral forces express themselves in crystals, 
so the life-force expresses itself in the species 
or form of plant and animal life. 

The mineral forces are perceived by man by 
means of the bodily senses. And he can only 
perceive that for which he has such senses. 
Without the eye there is no perception of 
light, without the ear no perception of sound. 
The lowest order of organic beings has only a 


26 THEOSOPHY 


kind of sense of touch. For these there exist 
only those mineral forces of which the sense of 
touch enables them to become aware. In pro- 
portion as the other senses are developed in 
the higher animals is the surrounding world 
richer and more varied for them. It depends, 
therefore, on the organs of a being whether 
that which exists in the outer world exists also 
for the being itself, as perception, as sensation. 
What is present in the air as a certain motion 
becomes in man the sensation of hearing. 
Man does not perceive the manifestations of 
the life-force through the ordinary senses. 
He SEES the colors of the plants; he SMELLS 
their perfume; the life-force remains hidden 
from THIS form of observation. But the ordi- 
nary senses have just as little right to deny the 
existence of the life-force as has the man born 
blind to deny that colors exist. Colors are 
there for the person born blind just as soon as 
he has been operated upon; in the same way, 
the life-force, as creating the various species of 
plants and animals created by it, is present 
to man as an object of perception as soon as 
the necessary organ unfolds within him. An 
entirely new world opens out to man through 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 27 


the unfolding of this organ. He now per- 
ceives, not merely the colors, the odors, etc., 
of the beings, but THESE BEINGS THEM- 
SELVES. In each plant, in each animal, he 
perceives, besides the physical form, the LIFE- 
FILLED SPIRIT-FORM. In order to have a name 
for this spirit-form let it be called the ETHER- 
BODY, or LIFE-BODY. 

To the investigator of spiritual life this 
matter presents itself in the following manner: 
The ether-body is for him not merely a prod- 
uct of the materials and forces of the physical 
body, but a real independent entity which first 
calls forth these physical materials and forces 
into life. One speaks in harmony with spirit- 
ual science when one says: a mere physical 
body, a crystal for example, has its form by 
means of the physical formative forces dwell- 
ing within it. A living body does NOT have 
its form by means of THESE forces, for in the 
moment in which life is extinct in it, and it is 
given over to the physical forces ONLY, it falls 
to pieces. The ether-body is an organism 
which preserves the physical body every 
moment during life from dissolution. In 
order to SEE this body, to perceive it in another 


28 THEOSOPHY 


being, one requires the awakened “SPIRITUAL 
EYE.” Without this, one can accept its exist- 
ence as a fact on logical grounds; but one can 
SEE it with the spiritual eye as one sees a color 
with the physical eye. One should not take 
offense at the expression “ether-body.” 
“Ether” here designates something different 
from the hypothetical ether of the physicist. 
One should regard the thing simply as a name 
for what is described here. And just as the 
physical body of man is constructed in con- 
formity with its set task, so is it also in 
conformity with the ether-body of man. One 
can understand it also only when one observes 
it in relation to the thinking spirit. The ether- 
body of man differs from that of plants and 
animals through being organized so as to serve 
the requirements of the thinking spirit. Just 
as man belongs to the mineral world through 
his physical body, he belongs through his 
ether-body to the life-world. After death the 
physical body dissolves into the mineral 
world, the ether-body into the life-world. (In 
theosophical literature the human ether-body 
is called “Linga sharira.”) By the word 
“body” is designated what in any way gives a 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 29 


being “shape” or “form.” The word used in 
' this sense must not be confused with the word 
body when used to designate physically sensi- 
ble bodies. Used in this sense the term body 
can also be applied to forms which soul and 
spirit may assume. 

In the life-body we still have something 
external to man. With the first stirrings of 
sensation the inner self responds to the excita- 
tions of the outer world. You may trace what 
one is justified in calling the outer world ever 
so far, but you will not be able to find the sen- 
sation. Rays of light stream into the eye, pene- 
trating till they reach the retina. There they 
call forth chemical processes (in the so-called 
visual-purple) ; the effect of this stimulus is 
passed on through the optic nerve to the brain; 
there further physical processes arise. Could 
one observe these one would see more physical 
processes, just as elsewhere in the physical 
world. If I am able to observe the ether- 
body, I will see how the physical-brain process 
is at the same time a life-process. But the sen- 
sation of blue color which the recipient of the 
rays of light has, I can find nowhere in this 
manner. It arises only within the soul of the 


30 THEOSOPHY 


recipient. If, therefore, the being of the 
recipient consisted only of the physical body 
and the ether-body, sensation could not exist. 
The activity by which sensation becomes a fact 
differs essentially from the operations of the 
life-force. By that activity an inner experi- 
ence is called forth from these operations. 
Without this activity there would be a mere 
life-process, such as one observes in plants. If 
one tries to picture how a human being 
receives impacts from all sides, one must think 
of him at the same time as the source of the 
above-mentioned activity which streams out 
toward every point from which he received 
these impacts. Sensations respond in all 
directions to the impacts. This fountain of 
activity is to be called the SENTIENT-SOUL. 
(It is the same as that which in theosophical 
literature is called “Kama.”) This sentient- 
soul is just as real as the physical body. Ifa 
man stand before me and I disregard his 
sentient-soul by thinking of him as merely a 
physical body, it is exactly as if I were to call 
up in my mind, instead of a painting—merely 
the canvas. 

A similar statement has to be made in 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 31 


regard to perceiving the sentient-soul as was 
previously made in reference to the ether- 
body. The bodily organs are “blind” to it. 
And blind to it is also the organ by which life 
as life can be perceived. But just as the ether- 
body is seen by means of this organ, the inner 
world of sensation itself can be seen through 
a still higher organ. A man then not only 
senses the impressions of the physical and life 
worlds, but he BEHOLDS the sensations them- 
selves. Before a man with such an organ the 
world of the sensations of another being is 
spread out like an open and, for him, a legible 
book. One must distinguish between experi- 
encing one’s own sensation world and looking 
at the sensation world of another. Every man 
of course can see into his own sensation world; 
only the SEER with the opened “spiritual eye” 
can SEE the sensation world of another. 
Unless a man be a seer he knows the sensation 
world only as an “inner” one, only as the 
peculiar hidden experiences of his own soul; 
with the opened “spiritual eye” there shines 
out before the external spiritual gaze what 
otherwise lives only in the “inner” being of 
another. 


32 THEOSOPHY 


The sentient-soul depends, as regards its 
activity, on the ether-body because it draws 
from it that which it will cause to gleam forth 
as sensation. And since the ether-body is the 
life within the physical body, the sentient- 
soul is indirectly dependent on the latter. 
Only with correctly-functioning and well- 
constructed eyes are correct color sensations 
possible. It is in this way that the corporality 
affects the sentient-soul. The latter is thus 
determined and limited in its efficaciousness 
by the body. It lives therefore within the 
limitations fixed for it by the corporality. 
The BobDy accordingly is built up of mineral 
materials, is vitalized by the ether-body, and 
itself limits the sentient-soul. He, therefore, 
who has the above-mentioned’ organ for “see- 
ing” the sentient-soul, sees it limited by the 
body. But the limits of the sentient-soul do 
not coincide with those of the physical body. 
The soul extends somewhat beyond it. By 
this one sees that it proves itself more power- 
ful than the physical body. But the force 
through which its limits are set proceeds from 
the physical body. So that between the phys- 
ical body and the ether-body on the one hand, 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 33 


and the sentient-soul on the other, there inserts 
itself another distinct member of the human 
constitution. This is the SOUL-BODY, or sentient 
body. (It is called in theosophical literature 
“astral shape,” or ‘““Kama Rupa;” “Rupa” sig- 
nifies form or shape.) One can also say: a 
part of the ether-body is finer than the rest, 
and this finer part of the ether-body forms a 
unity with the SENTIENT-SOUL, whereas the 
coarser part forms a kind of unity with the 
physical body. Nevertheless, the sentient- 
soul extends, as has been said, beyond the soul- 
body. 

What is here called sensation is only a part 
of the soul being. (The expression sentient- 
soul is chosen for the sake of simplicity.) 
Connected with sensations are the feelings 
of desire and aversion, impulses, instincts, pas- 
sions. All this bears the same character of 
individualized life as do the sensations, and is, 
like them, dependent on the corporality. 

Just as the sentient-soul enters into mutual 
action and reaction with the body, so does it 
also with thinking, with the spirit. Thought, 
among other things, is of immediate service to 
it. Man forms thoughts about his sensations. 


34 THEOSOPHY 


In this way he enlightens himself regarding 
the outside world. The child that has burnt 
itself thinks it over, and reaches the thought 
“fire burns.” Also man does not follow 
blindly his impulses, instincts, passions; his 
thought over them brings about the opportu- 
nity by which he can gratify them. What one 
calls material civilization moves entirely in 
this direction. It consists in the services 
which thinking renders to the sentient-soul. 
Immeasureable quantities of thought-power 
are directed to this end. It is thought-power 
that has built ships, railways, telegraphs, tele- 
phones; and by far the greatest proportion of 
all this serves only to satisfy the needs of the 
sentient-soul. Thought-force permeates the 
sentient-soul in a similar way to that in which 
the life-force permeates the physical body. 
Life-force connects the physical body with 
forefathers and descendants, and thus brings 
it under a system of laws with which the 
purely mineral body is in no way concerned. 
In the same way thought-force brings the soul 
under a system of laws to which it does not - 
belong as mere sentient-soul. Through the 
sentient-soul man is related to the animals. 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 35 


In animals, also, we observe the presence of 
sensations, impulses, instincts, and passions. 
But the animal obeys these immediately. 
They do not, in its case, become interwoven 
with independent THOUGHTS, transcending 
the immediate experiences. This is also the 
case to a certain extent with undeveloped 
human beings. The mere sentient-soul is 
therefore different from the evolved higher 
member of the soul which brings thinking 
into its service. This soul that is served by 
thought will be designated the intellectual- 
soul. One could call it also the emotional 
thought-soul. (Theosophical literature calls 
it “Kama manas.’’) 

The intellectual-soul permeates the sentient- 
soul. He who has the organ for “seeing” the 
soul sees, therefore, the intellectual-soul as a 
separate entity, distinct from the mere sen- 
tient-soul. 

By thinking man is raised above and beyond 
his own personal life. He acquires some- 
thing that extends beyond his soul. He comes 
to take for granted his conviction that the 
laws of thought are in conformity with the 
laws of the world. And he feels at home in 


36 THEOSOPHY 


the world because this conformity exists. This 
conformity is one of the important facts 
through which man learns to know his own 
nature. Man searches in his soul for truth; and 
through this truth it is not only the soul that 
speaks, but the things of the world. That 
which is recognized as truth by means of 
_ thought has an INDEPENDENT SIGNIFICANCE, 
which refers to the things of the world, and 
not merely to one’s own soul. My delight in 
the starry heavens is part of my own inner 
being; the thoughts which I form for myself 
about the courses of the heavenly bodies have 
the same significance for the thinking of every 
other person as they have for mine. It would 
be absurd to speak of My delight were | not in 
existence; but it is not in the same way absurd 
to speak of my thoughts, even WITHOUT REF- 
ERENCE to myself. For the truth which I 
think to-day was true yesterday also, and will 
be TRUE to-morrow, although I concern myself 
with it only to-day. If a piece of knowledge 
gives me joy, the joy has significance just so 
long as it lives in me. The TRUTH of the 
knowledge has its significance quite independ- 
ently of the joy. By grasping the truth the 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 37 


soul connects itself with something that carries 
its worth in itself. And this worth does not 
vanish with the feeling in the soul any more 
than it arose with it. What is really truth 
neither arises nor passes away; it has a signifi- 
cance which cannot be destroyed. This is not 
contradicted by the fact that certain human 
“truths” have a value which is transitory, inas- 
much as they are recognized after a certain 
period as partial or complete errors. For 
man must say to himself that truth after all 
exists in itself, although HIS conceptions are 
only transient forms of manifestation of the 
eternal truth. Even he who says, like Lessing, 
that he contents himself with the eternal striv- 
ing toward truth because the full pure truth 
can, after all, only exist for a God, does not 
deny the eternity of truth, but establishes it 
by such an utterance. For only that which 
has an eternal significance in itself can call 
forth an eternal striving after it. Were truth 
not in itself independent, if it acquired its 
worth and significance through the feelings of 
the human soul, THEN it could not be the ONE 
COMMON GOAL for all mankind. One con- 


38 THEOSOPHY 


cedes its INDEPENDENT BEING by the very fact 
that one wishes to strive after it. 

And as it is with the truth, so it is with the 
TRULY GOOD. The moral good is independent 
of inclinations and passions, inasmuch as it 
does not allow itself to be commanded by 
them, but commands them. Likes and dislikes, 
desire and loathing belong to the personal 
soul of man. Duty stands higher than likes 
and dislikes. Duty may stand so high in the 
eyes of a man that he will sacrifice his life for 
its sake. And a man stands the higher the 
more he has ennobled his inclinations, his likes 
and dislikes, so that, without compulsion or 
subjection, they themselves obey the recog- 
nized duty. The moral good has, like truth, 
its eternal value in itself, and does not receive 
it from the sentient-soul. 

In causing the self-existent true and good 
to come to life in his inner being, man raises 
himself above the mere sentient-soul. The 
eternal spirit shines into this soul. A light is 
kindled in it which is imperishable. In so 
far as the soul lives in this light, it is a partici- 
pant of the eternal. It unites its own exist- 
ence with an eternal existence. What the soul 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 39 


carries within itself of the true and the good is 
IMMORTAL in it. That which shines forth in 
the soul as eternal is to be called here CON- 
SCIOUSNESS-SOUL. CONSCIOUSNESS can_ be 
spoken of even in connection with the lower 
soul stirrings. The most ordinary everyday 
sensation is a matter of consciousness. ‘To this 
extent animals also have consciousness. The 
kernel of human consciousness, that is, THE 
SOUL WITHIN THE SOUL, is here meant by CON- 
SCIOUSNESS-SOUL. The consciousness-soul is 
accordingly differentiated from the intellect- 
ual-soul as yet another distinct member of the 
human soul. The intellectual-soul is still 
entangled in the sensations, the impulses, the 
passions, etc. Everyone knows how at first a 
man holds that to be true which he, owing to 
his feelings, prefers. Only THAT truth, how- 
ever, is PERMANENT which has freed itself 
from ALL taint of such feelings as sympathy 
and antipathy. The truth is true, even if all 
personal feelings revolt against it. The part 
of the soul in which THIS truth lives will be 
called consciousness-soul. 

So that even as one had to distinguish three 
members in the body, one has also to distin- 


40 THEOSOPHY 


guish three in the soul ; SENTIENT-SOUL, INTEL- 
LECTUAL-SOUL,CONSCIOUSNESS-SOUL. And just 
as the corporality works from below upward 
with a LIMITING effect on the soul, so the 
spiritual works from above downward into 
it, EXPANDING it. For the more the soul fills 
itself with the True and the Good, the wider 
and the more comprehensive becomes the 
eternal in it. ‘To him who is able to “see” the 
soul, the splendor which goes out from a 
human being, because his eternal is expanding, 
is just as much a reality as the light which 
streams out from a flame is real to the physical 
eye. For the “seer” the corporeal man is only 
a part of the WHOLE MAN. The body as the 
coarsest structure lies within others, which 
interpenetrate both it and each other. The 
ether-body fills the physical body as a double 
form; extending beyond this on all sides is to 
be seen the soul-body (astral shape). And 
beyond this, again, extends the sentient-soul, 
then the intellectual-soul, which grows the 
larger the more it receives into itself of the 
True and the Good. For this True and Good 
cause the expansion of the intellectual-soul. A 
man living only and entirely according to his 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 41 


inclinations, his likes and dislikes, would have 
an intellectual-soul whose limits coincide with 
those of his sentient-soul. These organiza- 
tions, in the midst of which the physical body 
appears as if in a cloud, are called the HUMAN 
AURA. 

In the course of the childhood of a human 
being, there comes a moment in which, for the 
first time, he feels himself to be an independent 
being distinct from the whole of the rest of the 
world. For persons with finely-strung natures 
it is a significant experience. The poet Jean 
Paul says in his autobiography, “I shall never 
forget the event which took place within me, 
hitherto narrated to no one, and of which I 
can give place and time, when I stood present 
at the birth of my self-consciousness. As a very 
small child I stood at the door of the house 
one morning, looking toward the wood pile 
on my left, when suddenly the inner revelation 
‘T am an |’ came to me like a flash of lightning 
from heaven and has remained shining ever 
since. In that moment my ego had seen itself 
for the first time and forever. Any deception 
of memory is hardly to be conceived as possible 
here, for no narrations by outsiders could have 


42 THEOSOPHY 


introduced additions to an occurrence which 
took place in the holy of holies of a human 
being, and of which the novelty alone gave 
permanence to such everyday surroundings.” 
It is known that little children say to them- 
selves, “Charles is good,” “Mary wishes to 
have this.” They speak of themselves as if 
of others because they have not yet become 
conscious of their independent existence, 
because the consciousness of the self is not yet 
born in them. Through self-consciousness 
man describes himself as an independent 
being, separate from all others, as “I.” In his 
“I” man brings together all that he experi- 
ences as a being in body and soul. Body and 
soul are the carriers of the ego or “I;” in them 
it acts. Just as the physical body has its center 
in the brain, so has the soul its center in the 
ego. Man is aroused to sensations by impacts 
from without; feelings manifest themselves as 
the effects of the outer world; the will relates 
itself to the outside world in that it realizes 
itself in external actions. The ego as the 
peculiar and essential being of man remains - 
quite invisible. Excellently, therefore, does 
Jean Paul call a man’s recognition of his ego 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 43 


an “occurrence taking place only in the veiled 
holy of holies of a man,” for with his “I” 
man is quite alone. And this “I” is the 
man himself. That justifies him in regarding 
his ego as his true being. He may, therefore, 
describe his body and his soul as the 
“SHEATHS” or “VEILS” within which he lives; 
and he may describe them as his TOOLS through 
which he acts. In the course of his evolution 
he learns to regard these tools ever more and 
more as the servants of his ego. The little 
word “I” (German ich) as it is used, for 
example, in the English and German lan- 
guages, is a name which differs from all other 
names. Anyone who reflects in an appropri- 
ate manner on the nature of this name will 
find that it forms an avenue to the understand- 
ing of the human being in the deeper sense. 
Any other name can be applied to its corre- 
sponding object by all men in the same way. 
Anybody can call a table “table” or a chair 
“chair,” but this is not so with the name I. 
No one can use it in referring to another per- 
son; each one can call only himself “I.” 
Never can the name “I” reach my ears from 
outside when it refers to ME. Only from 


44 THEOSOPHY 


within, only through itself, can the soul refer 
to itself as “I.” When the human being 
therefore says “I” to himself, something 
begins to speak in him that has nothing to do 
with anyone of the worlds from which the 
“sheaths” so far mentioned are taken. 

The I becomes ever more and more ‘Tuler 
of body and soul. This also comes to visible 
expression in the aura. The more the I is 
lord over body and soul, the more numerous 
and complex are its members, and the more 
varied and rich are the colors of the aura. 
This effect of the I on the aura can be seen by 
the “seeing” person. The I itself is invisible, 
even to him. This remains truly within the 
“veiled holy of holies of a man.” But the I 
absorbs into itself the rays of the light which 
flames forth in a man as eternal light. As he 
gathers together the experiences of body and 
soul in the I, he also causes the thoughts of 
truth and goodness to stream into the I. The 
phenomena of the senses reveal themselves to 
the I from the one side, the SPIRIT reveals 
itself from the other. Body and soul yield 
themselves up to the I in order to serve it; but 
the I yields itself up to the spirit in order that 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 45 


it may be filled byit. The I lives in body and 
soul; but the spirit lives in the 1. And what 
there is of spiritin the 1 is eternal. For the I 
receives its nature and significance from that 
with which it is bound up. Inasmuch as it 
lives in the physical body, it is subject to the 
laws of the mineral world; through its ether- 
body to the laws of propagation and growth; 
by virtue of the sentient and intellectual souls 
to the laws of the soul world; in so far as it 
receives the spiritual into itself it is subject 
to the laws of the spirit. That which the 
mineral laws and the life laws construct comes 
into being and vanishes; but the spirit has 
nothing to do with becoming and perishing. 
The I lives in the soul. Although the high- 
est manifestation of the I belongs to the con- 
sciousness-soul, one must nevertheless say that 
this I, raying out from it, fills the whole 
of the soul, and through the soul affects the 
body. And in the I the spirit is alive. It 
rays into it and lives in it as in a “sheath” or 
veil, just as the I lives in its sheaths, the bedy 
and the soul. The spirit develops the I from 
within, outward; the mineral world develops 
it from without, inward. The spirit forming 


46 | THEOSOPHY 


an I and living as I will be called SPIRIT- 
SELF, because it manifests as the I, or ego, 
or “self” of man. (“Spirit-self” signifies the 
same as that which in theosophical literature 
is called “Higher manas.” The Sanscrit 
word “manas” is related to the English word 
“man,” and the German word “Mensch,” and 
signifies the human being in so far as he is a 
spiritual being.) The difference between the 
“spirit-self” and the ‘“consciousness-soul” can 
be made clear in the following way. The 
consciousness-soul is the bearer of the self- 
existent truth which is independent of all 
antipathy and sympathy, the spirit-self bears 
within it the SAME truth, but taken up into and 
enclosed by the I, individualized by the latter 
and absorbed into the independent being of 
the man. It is through the eternal truth 
becoming thus individualized and bound up 
into one being with the I, that the I itself 
attains to eternity. 

The spirit-self is a revelation of the spiritual 
world within the I, just as from the other side 
sensations are a revelation of the physical 
world within the I. In that which is red, 
green, light, dark, hard, soft, warm, cold, one 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 47 


recognizes the revelations of the corporal 
world; in what is true and good, the revela- 
tions of the spiritual world. In the same sense 
in which the revelation of the corporal world 
is called SENSATION, let the revelation of the 
spiritual be called INTUITION. Even the 
most simple thought contains intuition, for 
one cannot touch it with the hands or see it 
with the eyes; one must receive its revelation 
from the spirit through the I. If an unde- 
veloped and a developed man look at a plant, 
there lives in the I of the one something quite 
different from that which is in the ego of the 
other. And yet the sensations of both are 
called forth by the same object. The differ- 
ence lies in this, that the one can make far 
more perfect thoughts about the object than 
the other can. If objects revealed themselves 
through sensation alone, there could be no 
progress in spiritual development. Even the 
savage is affected by nature, but the laws of 
nature reveal themselves only to the thoughts, 
fructified by intuition, of the more highly 
developed man. The excitations from the 
outer world are felt even by the child as incen- 
tives to the will; but the commandments of 


48 THEOSOPHY 


the morally good disclose themselves to him 
in the course of his development only as he 
learns to live in the spirit and understand its 
revelations. 

Just as there could be no color sensations 
without physical eyes, there could be no intui- 
tions without the higher thinking of the spirit- 
self. And as little as sensation creates the 
plant on which the color appears, does intui- 
tion create the spiritual realities about which 
it is merely giving information. 

The I of man, which comes to life in the 
soul, draws in messages from above, from the 
spirit world through intuitions, just as through 
sensations it draws in messages from the phys- 
ical world. By doing this it makes the spirit 
world the individualized life of its own soul, 
even as it does the physical world by means 
of the senses. The soul, or the I flaming forth 
in it, opens its portals on .wo sides, toward the 
corporal and toward the spiritual. Now as 
just the physical world can only give informa- 
tion about itself to the ego, because it builds 
out of physical materials and forces a body in 
which the conscious soul can live and possess 
organs for perceiving the corporal world out- 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 49 


side itself, so the spiritual world builds, with 
its spiritual materials and spiritual forces, 
a spirit-body in which the I can live and 
through intuitions perceive the spiritual. (It 
is evident that the expression SPIRIT-BODY con- 
tains a contradiction, according to the literal 
meaning of the word. It is only to be used 
in order to direct attention to what, in the 
spiritual regions, corresponas to the body of 
man in the physical.) 

Just as within the physical world each 
human body is built up as a separate being, 
so is the spirit-body within the spirit world. 
In the spirit world there is for man an inner 
and an outer, just as there is in the physical 
world. As man takes in the materials of the 
physical world around him and assimilates 
them within his physical body, so does he take 
the spiritual from the spirtiual environment 
and make it into his own. The spiritual is 
the eternal nourishment of man. And as man 
is born of the physical world, he is also born 
of the spirit through the eternal laws of the 
True and the Good. He is separated from 
the spirit world outside of him, as he is 
separated from the whole physical world, as 


50 THEOSOPHY 


an independent being. This independent 
spiritual being will be called SPIRIT-MAN. 
(It is the same as that which is called ATMA 
in theosophical literature.) 

If we examine the human physical body, 
we find the same materials and forces in it as 
we find outside it in the rest of the physical 
world. It is the same with the spirit-man. 
In it pulsate the elements of the external spirit 
world. In it the forces of the rest of the 
spirit world are active. As a being within 
the physical skin becomes a self-contained 
entity, living and feeling, so also in the spirit 
world. The spiritual skin which separates 
the spirit man from the uniform spirit world 
makes him an independent being within it, 
living a life within himself and perceiving 
intuitively the spiritual-content-of the world. 
This “spiritual skin” will be called SPIRIT- 
SHEATH. (In theosophical literature it is 
called AURIC SHEATH.) It_must be kept 
clearly in mind that the spiritual skin expands 
continually with the advancing human evolu- 
tion, so that the spiritual individuality of man - 
(his auric-sheath) is capable of enlargement 
to an unlimited extent. 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 51 


The spirit-man LIVES within this spirit- 
sheath. It is built up by the spirtual LIFE- 
FORCE in the same way as is the physical body 
by the physical life-force. Ina similar way to 
that in which one speaks of an ether-body one 
must therefore speak of an ether-spirit in 
reference to the spirit-man. Let this ether- 
spirit be called LIFE-SPIRIT. The spiritual 
being of man therefore is composed of three 
parts, SPIRIT-MAN, LIFE-SPIRIT, and SPIRIT- 
SELF. (Atma, budhi, manas are the corre- 
sponding expressions in theosophical litera- 
ture. For Budhi is the separated special 
life-spirit which is formed by the SPIRITUAL 
LIFE-FORCE, or Budhi.) 

For him who is a “seer” in the spiritual 
regions, this spiritual being of man is a per- 
ceptible reality as the higher, truly spiritual 
part of the AURA. He “sees” the spirit-man 
as life-spirit within the spirit-sheath, and he 
“sees” how this “‘life-spirit” grows continually 
larger by taking in spiritual nourishment 
from the spirtual external world. Fur- 
ther, he sees how the spirit-sheath continually 
increases, widens out through what is brought 
into it, and how the spirit-man becomes ever 


52 THEOSOPHY 


larger and larger. For the difference between 
the spiritual and the physical being of man is 
that the latter has a limited size while the 
former can grow to an unlimited extent. 
Whatever of spiritual nourishment is absorbed 
has an eternal worth. The human aura is 
accordingly composed of two interpenetra- 
ting parts. Color and form are given to the 
one by the physical existence of man, and to 
the other by his spiritual existence. The ego 
forms the separation between them in this way 
that, while the physical after its own manner 
GIVES ITSELF to building up a body which 
allows a soul to live and expand in it, and the 
ego GIVES ITSELF to allowing to live and de- 
velop in it the spirit which now for its part 
permeates the soul and gives it the goal in the 
spirit world. Through the body the soul is 
enclosed in the physical; through the spirit- 
man there grow wings for its moving in the 
spiritual world. 

In order to comprehend the WHOLE man, 
one must think of him as formed of the com- 
ponents above mentioned. ‘The body builds 
itself up out of the world of physical matter 
in such a way that the construction is adapted 


| 
| 
} 


\ 
\ 
\ 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 53 


to the requirements of the thinking ego. It 
is penetrated with life-force, and thereby 
becomes the ether or life-body. As such it 
opens itself through the sense organs toward 
the outer world and becomes the soul-body. 
This the sentient-soul permeates and becomes 
one with. The sentient-soul does not merely 
receive the impacts of the outer world as sen- 
sations. It has its own inner life which it 
fructifies through thinking on the one hand, 
as it does through sensations on the other. In 
this way it becomes the intellectual-soul. It 
is able to do this by opening itself up to intui- 
tions from above, as it does to sensations from 
below. Thus it becomes the consciousness-soul. 
This is possible to it because the spirit world 
builds into it the organ of intuition, just as 
the physical body builds in it the sense organs. 
As the senses transmit sensations by means of 
the soul-body, the spirit transmits to it intui- 
tions through the organ of intuition. The 
,spirit-man is therefore linked into a unity 


) -\with the consciousness-soul, just as the physical 


body is with the sentient-soul in the soul-body. 
Consciousness-soul and spirit-self form a 
unity. In this unity the spirit-man LIVES as 


54 THEOSOPHY 


life-spirit, just as the ether body forms the 
bodily life-basis for the soul-body. And as the 
physical body is enclosed in the physical skin, 
so is the spirit-man in the spirit-sheath. The 
members of the WHOLE man are as follows: 
. Physical-body. 
. Ether-body. 
. Soul-body. 
. Sentient-soul. yr 
. Intellectual-soul. 
. Consciousness-soul. 
. Spirit-self. 
. Life-spirit. 
. Spirit-man. 

Soul-body (C) and sentient-soul (D) are a 
unity in the earthly man; in the same way 
are consciousness-soul (F) and spirit-self (G) 
a unity. Thus there come to be seven parts 
in the earthly man. The expressions used in 
theosophical literature are as follows: 

1. Physical-body (Sthula sharira). 

2. Ether or life-body (Linga sharira). 

3. Sentient-soul-body (Astral body, Kama 

rupa). 
4. Intellectual-soul (Lower manas, Kama 
manas). 


poe eis Gare ey CW 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 55 


s. Spirit-filled Consciousness-soul (Higher 

manas). 

6. Life-spirit (Spiritual-body, Budhi). 

7. Spirit-man (Atma). 

The “I” flashes forth in the soul, receives 
the infusion from out the spirit and thereby 
becomes the bearer of the spirit-man. 
Through this, man participates in the “three 
worlds,” the physical, the soul, and the spir- 
itual. He takes root in the physical world 
through his physical body, ether-body, and 
soul-body and flowers through the spirit-self, 
life-spirit, and spirit-man up into the spir- 
itual world. The STALK, however, which 
takes root in the one and flowers in the other, 
is the soul itself. 

One can express this arrangement of the 
members of man in a simplified way, but one 
entirely consistent with the above. Although 
the human I flashes forth in the conscious- 
ness-soul, it nevertheless penetrates the whole 
soul-being. The parts of this soul-being are 
not as distinctly separate as are the limbs of 
the body; they penetrate each other, in a 
higher sense. If then, one hold clearly in 
view the intellectual-soul and the conscious- 


56 THEOSOPHY 


ness-soul as the two members united to form 
the bearer of the I, and this I as their kernel, 
one can divide man into physical body, life- 
body, astral-body, and I. The expression 
astral-body designates here what is formed 
by soul-body and_sentient-soul together, 
although the sentient-soul is in a certain 
respect energized by the I. When now the I 
penetrates itself with spirit-self, this spirit- 
self comes into evidence in the transmutation 
of the astral-body by a force within the soul. 
In the astral-body there are primarily active 
the impulses, desires, and passions of man, 
in so far as they are felt by him; the physical 
perceptions also take effect in it. Physical 
perceptions arise through the soul-body as a 
member in man which comes to him from the 
external world. Impulses, desires, and pas- 
sions, etc., arise in the sentient-soul, in so far 
as it is energized by the soul before the latter 
has yielded itself to the spirit. If the I pene- 
trates itself with spirit-self, the soul proceeds 
to energize the astral-body with this spirit- 
self. This expresses itself in the illumination 
of the impulses, desires, and passions by what 
the I has received from the spirit. The I has 


CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN BEING 57 


then, through the power it gains as partaker 
of the spiritual world, become ruler in the 
world of impulses, desires, etc. In proportion 
to the extent to which it has become this the 
spirit-self appears in the astral-body. And 
the astral-body becomes thereby transmuted. 
The astral-body itself then becomes visible as 
a two-membered body, an untransmuted and 
a transmuted. One can therefore designate 
the spirit-self, as manifested in man, as trans- 
muted astral-body. 

A similar process takes place in a person 
when he receives the life spirit into his I. 
The Life-body then becomes transmuted. It 
becomes penetrated with the life-spirit. And 
the Life-spirit reveals itself in that the life- 
body becomes quite other than it was. For 
this reason one can also say that life-spirit 
is transmuted life-body. And if the I receives 
the spirit-man, it thereby receives the strong 
force with which to penetrate the physical 
body. Naturally, that part of the physical 
body thus transmuted is NOT perceptible to 
the physical senses. It is, in fact, just that 
part of the physical body which has been 
spiritualized that has become the spirit-man. 


58 THEOSOPHY 


The physical body is then present to the 
physical senses as physical, and in so far as 
this physical is spiritualized, it has to be 
perceived by spiritual faculties of perception. 
To the external senses the physical, even when 
penetrated by the spiritual, appears to be 
merely sensible. 

Taking all this as a basis, one can have also 
the following arrangement of the members 
of man: 

1. Physical-body. 

. Life-body. 

. Astral-body. 

. I, as soul kernel. 

. Spirit-self as transmuted astral-body. 

. Life-spirit “ i life-body. 

. Spirit-man “ iy physical-body. 


NI AW BW DN 


CHAPTER II 


RE-EMBODIMENT OF THE SPIRIT 
AND DESTINY 


REINCARNATION AND KARMA 


IN the midst between body and spirit lives 
the SOUL. The impressions which come to it 
through the body are transitory. They are 
present only as long as the body opens its 
organs to the things of the outer world. My 
eye perceives the color of the rose only so 
long as the rose is opposite to it and my eye 
is itself open. The PRESENCE of the things of 
the outer world as well as of the bodily organs 
is necessary in order that an impression, a 
sensation, or a perception can take place. 
But what I have recognized in my spirit as 
TRUTH concerning the rose does not pass 
with the present moment. And, as regards 
its truth, it is not in the least dependent on 
me. It would be true even although I had 


59 


60 THEOSOPHY 


never stood in front of the rose. What I know 
through the spirit is timeless or ETERNAL. 
The soul is placed between the present and 
eternity, in that it holds the middle place 
between body and spirit. But it is also 
the INTERMEDIARY between the present and 
eternity. It preserves the present for the 
REMEMBRANCE. It thereby rescues it from 
impermanence, and brings it nearer to the 
eternity of the spiritual. It stamps eternity 
on the temporal and impermanent by not 
merely yielding itself up to the transitory 
incitements, but by determining things from 
out its own initiative, and embodying its own 
nature in them by means of the actions it 
performs. By remembrance the soul pre- 
serves the yesterday, by action it prepares the 
to-morrow. 

My soul would have to perceive the red of 
the rose always afresh if it could not store it 
up in remembrance. What remains after an 
external impression, what can be retained by 
the soul, is the CONCEPTION. Through the 
power of forming conceptions the soul makes 
the corporal outer world so far into its own 
inner world that it can then retain the latter 


RE-EMBODIMENT AND DESTINY 61 


in the memory for remembrance and, inde- 
pendent of the gained impressions, lead with 
it thereafter a life of its own. The soul-life 
thus becomes the enduring result of the 
transitory impressions of the external world. 

But an action also receives permanence 
when once it is stamped on the outer world. 
If I cut a branch from a tree something has 
taken place by means of my soul which 
completely changes the course of events in 
the outer world. Something quite different 
would have happened to the branch of the 
tree if I had not interfered by my action. I 
have called forth into life a series of effects 
which, without my existence, would not 
have been present. What I have done TO-DAY 
endures for TO-MORROW ; it becomes permanent 
through the DEED, as my impressions of yes- 
terday have become permanent for my soul 
through memory. 

Let us first consider memory. How does 
it originate? Evidently in quite a different 
way from sensation or perception, because 
these are made possible by the corporality. 
Without the eye I cannot have the sensation 
“blue.’ But in no way do I have the 


62 THEOSOPHY 


remembrance of “blue” through the eye. 
If the eye is to give me this sensation now, 
a blue thing must come before it. The 
corporality would always allow impressions 
to sink back into nothingness if it alone 
existed. I remember; that is, I experience 
something which is itself no longer present. 
I unite a past experience with my present 
life. This is the case with every remembrance. 
Let us say, for instance, that I meet a man 
and recognize him again because I met him 
yesterday. He would be a complete stranger 
to me were I not able to unite the picture 
perception with my impression of him to-day. 
The picture of to-day is given me by the 
perception, that is to say, by my corporality. 
But who conjures that of yesterday into my 
soulP It is the same being in me that was 
present during my experience yesterday, and 
that is also present in that of to-day. In the 
previous explanations it has been called 
SOUL. Were it not for this faithful preserver 
of the past each external impression would be 
always new to a man. ; 
As preserver of the past the soul con- 
tinually gathers treasures for the spirit. That 


RE-EMBODIMENT AND DESTINY 63 


I can distinguish right from wrong follows 
because I, as a human being, am a thinking 
being, able to grasp the truth in my spirit. 
Truth is eternal; and it could always reveal 
itself to me again in things, even if I were 
always to lose sight of the past and each 
impression were to be a new one to me. But 
the spirit within me is not restricted to the 
impressions of the present alone; the, soul 
extends its horizon over the past. And the 
more it is able to bring to the spirit out of the 
past, the richer does it make the spirit. In 
this way the soul transmits to the spirit what 
_ it has received from the body. The-spirit of 
man therefore carries each moment of its life 
a twofold possession within itself, firstly, 
the eternal laws of the good and the true; 
secondly, the remembrance of the experiences 
of the past. What he does, he accomplishes 
under the influence of these two factors. If 
we wish to understand a human spirit we 
must therefore know two different things 
about him, first, how much of the eternal 
has revealed itself to him; second, how much 
treasure from the past is stored up within 


him. 
6 


64 THEOSOPHY 


The treasure by no means remains in the 
spirit in an unchanged shape. The concep- 
tions which man extracts from his experiences 
fade gradually from the memory. Not so, 
however, their fruits. One does not remember 
all the experiences one had during childhood 
when acquiring the arts of reading and 
writing. But one could not read or write if 
one had not had the experiences, and if their 
fruits had not been preserved in the form of 
abilities. And that is the transmutation 
which the spirit effects on the treasures of 
memory. It consigns the pictures of the 
separate experiences to their fate, and only 
extracts from them the force necessary for 
enhancing and increasing its abilities. Thus 
not one experience passes by unused; the soul 
preserves each one as memory, and from each 
the spirit draws forth all that can enrich its 
abilities and the whole content of its life. The 
human spirit GROWS through assimilated 
experiences. And, although one cannot find 
the past experiences in the spirit preserved 
as if in a storeroom, one nevertheless finds. 
their effects in the abilities which the man has 
acquired. 


RE-EMBODIMENT AND DESTINY 65 


Thus far spirit and soul have been con- 
sidered only within the period lying between 
life and death. One cannot rest there. Any- 
one wishing to do that would be like the 
man who observes the human body also 
within the same limits only. Much can cer- 
tainly be discovered within these limits. But 
the HUMAN FORM can never be explained by 
what lies between birth and death. It can- 
not build itself up unaided out of mere phys- 
ical matter and forces. It takes rise in a 
form like its own, which has been passed on 
to it by propagation. Physical materials 
and forces build up the body during life; the 
forces of propagation enable another body, 
inheriting its form, to proceed from it; that is 
to say, one which is able to be the bearer of 
the same life-body. Each life-body is a repeti- 
tion of its forefathers. Only BECAUSE it is 
such does it appear, not in any chance form, 
but in that passed on to it. The forces which 
have given me human form lay in my fore- 
fathers. But the spirit also of a man appears 
in a definite form. And the forms of the spirit 
are the most varied imaginable in different 
persons. No two men have the same spiritual 


66 THEOSOPHY 


form. One ought to make investigations in 
this region in just as quiet and matter-of-fact 
a manner as in the physical world. It cannot 
be said that the differences in human beings 
in spiritual respects arise only from the differ- 
ences in their environment, their upbring- 
ing, etc. No, this is by no means the case, 
for two people under similar influences as 
regards environments, upbringing,  etc., 
develop in quite different ways. One is there- 
fore forced to admit that they have entered 
on their path of life with quite different pre- 
dispositions. Here one is brought face to face 
with an important fact which, when its full 
bearing is recognized, sheds light on the 
nature of man. 

Human. beings differ from their animal 
fellow-creatures on the earth as regards 
their physical form. But among each other 
human beings are, within certain limits, the 
same in regard to their physical form. There 
is only one human species. However great 
may be the differences between races, peoples, 
tribes, and personalities as regards the phys- 
ical body, the resemblance between man and 
man is greater than between man and any 


RE-EMBODIMENT AND DESTINY 67 


brute species. All that expresses itself as 
human species passes on from forefather to 
descendants. And the human form is bound 
to this heredity. As the lion can inherit its 
physical form from lion forefathers only, so 
the human being inherits his physical body 
from human forefathers only. 

Just as the physical similarity of men is 
quite evident to the eye, the DIFFERENCE of 
their spiritual. forms reveals itself to the 
unprejudiced spiritual gaze. There is one 
very evident fact which shows this clearly. It 
consists in the existence of the biography of 
a human being. Were a human being merely 
a member of a species, no biography could 
exist. A lion, a dove, lay claim to interest in 
so far as they belong to the lion, the dove 
genus. One has understood the separate being 
in all its ESSENTIALS when one has described 
the genus. It matters little whether one has 
to do with father, son, or grandson. What is 
of interest in them, father, son, and grandson 
have in common. But what a human being 
signifies begins, not where he is a mere mem- 
ber of a genus, but only where he is a separate 
being. I have not in the least understood the 


68 THEOSOPHY 


nature of Mr. Smith of Crowcorner if I have 
described his son or his father. I must know 
his own biography. Anyone who reflects 
accurately on the essence of biography 
becomes aware that in regard to spiritual 
things EACH MAN IS A SPECIES BY HIMSELF. 
Those people, to be sure, who regard a biog- 
raphy merely as a collection of external inci- 
dents in the life of a person, may claim that 
they can write the biography of a dog in the 
same way as that of aman. But anyone who 
depicts in a biography the real individuality 
of a man, grasps the fact that he has in the 
biography of ONE human being something 
that corresponds to the description of a whole 
genus in the animal kingdom. 

Now if genus or species in the physical 
sense becomes intelligible only when one 
understands it as the result of heredity, the 
spiritual being can be intelligible only through 
a similar SPIRITUAL HEREDITY. I have 
received my physical human form from my 
forefathers. Whence have I that which 
comes to expression in my biography? As | 
physical man, I repeat the shape of my 
forefathers. What do I repeat as spiritual 


RE-EMBODIMENT AND DESTINY 69 


man? Anyone claiming that what is com- 
prised in my biography requires no further 
explanation has to be regarded as having no 
other course open to him than to claim 
equally that he has seen, somewhere, an 
earth mound on which the lumps of matter 
have aggregated quite by themselves into a 
living man. 

As physical man I spring from other 
physical men, for I have the same shape as 
the whole human species. The qualities of 
the species, accordingly, could be bequeathed 
to me within the genus. As spiritual man I 
have my own shape as I have my own 
biography. I therefore can have obtained 
this shape from no one but myself. Since I 
entered the world not with undefined but with 
defined predispositions; and since the course 
of my life as it comes to expression in my biog- 
raphy is determined by these predispositions, 
my work on myself cannot have begun with 
my birth. I must, as spiritual man, have 
existed before my birth. In my forefathers 
I have certainly not been existent, for they as 
spiritual human beings are different from me. 
My biography is not explainable through 


70 THEOSOPHY 


theirs. On the contrary, I must, as spiritual 
being, be the repetition of one through whose 
biography mine can be explained. ‘The phys- 
ical form which Schiller bore he inherited 
from his forefathers. But just as little as 
Schiller’s physical form can have grown out 
of the earth, so little can his spiritual being 
have done so. It must be the repetition of 
another spiritual being through whose biog- 
raphy his will be explainable as his physical 
human form is explainable through human 
propagation. In the same way, therefore, that 
the physical human form is ever again and 
again a repetition, a reincarnation of the dis- 
tinctively human species, the spiritual human 
being must be a reincarnation of the SAME 
spiritual human being. For as spiritual human 
being, each one is in fact his own species. 

It might be said in objection to what has 
been stated here that it is pure spinning of 
thoughts, and such external proof might be 
demanded as one is accustomed to in ordinary 
natural science. The reply to this is that the 
reémbodiment of the spiritual human being 
is, naturally, a process which does not belong 
to the region of external physical facts, but 





<a 


RE-EMBODIMENT AND DESTINY ae 


is one that takes place entirely in the spiritual 
region. And to this region no other of our 
ORDINARY powers of intelligence has entrance, 
save that of THINKING. He who is unwilling 
to trust to the power of thinking cannot, in 
fact, enlighten himself regarding higher spir- 
itual facts. For him whose spiritual eye is 
opened the above train of thoughts acts with 
exactly the same force as does an event that 
takes place before his physical eyes. He who 
ascribes to a so-called “proof,” constructed 
according to the methods of natural science, 
greater power to convince than the above 
observations concerning the significance of 
biography, may be in the ordinary sense of the 
word a great scientist, but from the paths of 
true SPIRITUAL investigation he is very far 
distant. 

One of the gravest prejudices consists in 
trying to explain the spiritual qualities of a 
man by inheritance from father, mother, 
or other ancestors. He who contracts the 
prejudice, for example, that Goethe inherited 
what constitutes his essential being from 
father or mother will at first be hardly 
approachable with arguments, for there lies 


72 THEOSOPHY 


within him a deep antipathy to unprejudiced 
observation. A materialistic spell prevents 
him from seeing the relations of phenomena 
in the true light. 

In such observations as the preceding, the 
presuppositions are supplied for following the 
human being beyond birth and death. Within 
the boundaries formed by birth and death 
the human being belongs to the three worlds, 
of corporality, of soul, and of spirit. The 
soul forms the link between body and spirit 
because it penetrates the third member of 
the body, the soul-body, with a capacity for 
sensation, and because it permeates the first 
member of the spirit, the spirit-self, as 
consciousness-soul. In this way it takes 
part and lot during life with the body as well 
as with the spirit. This comes to expression 
in its whole existence. It will depend on the 
construction of the soul-body how the 
sentient-soul can unfold its capabilities. And, 
on the other hand, it will depend on the life 
of the consciousness-soul to what extent the 
spirit-self can develop itself in it. The more 
highly developed the soul-body is, the more 
complete is the intercourse which the sentient- 


RE-EMBODIMENT AND DESTINY 73 


soul will be able to develop with the outer 
world. And the spirit-self will become so 
much the richer and more powerful, the more 
the consciousness-soul brings it nourishment. 
It has been shown that during life this 
nourishment is supplied to the spirit-self 
through assimilated experiences, and the 
fruits of these experiences. For the inter- 
action of soul and spirit described above, 
can, of course, only take place where soul 
and spirit are within each other, penetrating 
each other, that is, within the union of 
“spirit-self” with ‘“consciousness-soul.” 

Let us consider, first, the interaction uf 
the soul-body and sentient-soul. The soul- 
body is, as has become evident, the most finely 
elaborated part of the corporality; but it, 
nevertheless, belongs to it and is dependent on 
it. Physical-body, ether-body, and soul-body 
compose, in a certain sense, one whole. Hence 
the soul-body is also drawn within the laws of 
physical heredity through which the body 
receives its shape. And since it is the most 
mobile and, so to speak, volatile form of cor- 
porality, it must also exhibit the most mobile, 
volatile manifestations of heredity. While, 


74 THEOSOPHY 


therefore, the difference in the physical body 
is smallest, corresponding to races, peoples, 
and tribes; and while the ether-body presents, 
on the whole, a preponderating likeness 
although a greater divergence in single indi- 
viduals, in the soul-body the difference is a 
very great one. In it is expressed what one 
already feels to be the EXTERNAL, PERSONAL, 
uniqueness of a man. It is therefore also the 
bearer of that part of this personal uniqueness 
which is passed on from parents, grand-par- 
ents, etc., to descendants. The soul as such 
leads, as has been explained, a completely self- 
contained life of its own; it shuts itself up with — 
its inclinations and disinclinations, its feelings 
and passions; but, as a whole being, it is 
nevertheless active, and therefore this whole 
comes to expression also in the sentient-soul. 
And because the sentient-soul penetrates and, 
as it were, fills up the soul-body, the latter 
forms itself according to the nature of the 
soul and can in this way, as the bearer of 
heredity, pass on tendencies, passions, etc., 
from forefathers to children. On this fact 
rests what Goethe says: “From my father 
I have stature and the serious manner of life, 


RE-EMBODIMENT AND DESTINY 75 


from the little mother the joyous disposition 
and the love of romance.” Genius, of course, 
he did not receive from either. In this way 
we are shown what part of a man’s soul 
qualities he hands over, as it were, to the line 
of physical heredity. 

The matter and forces of the physical body 
are in the whole external physical nature 
around us. They are continually being taken 
from it and given back to it. In the space 
of a few years the matter which composes 
our physical body is entirely renewed. That 
this matter takes the form of the human body, 
and that it always renews itself again within 
this body, is due to the fact that it is held 
together by the ether-body. And the form 
of the latter is not determined by events 
between birth—or conception—and death 
alone, but is dependent on the laws of 
heredity which extend beyond birth and death. 
That soul qualities also can be transmitted by 
heredity, that is, that the process of physical 
heredity receives an infusion from the soul, 
is due to the fact that the soul-body can be 
influenced by the sentient-soul. 

Now how does the interaction between body 


76 THEOSOPHY 


and soul proceed? During life the spirit is 
bound up with the soul in the way shown 
above. The soul receives from it the power 
of living in the Good and the: True, and of 
thereby bringing in its own life, in its tend- 
encies, impulses, and passions, the spirit itself 
to expression. The spirit-self brings to the I, 
from the world of the spirit, the eternal laws 
of the True and the Good. These link them- 
selves through the consciousness-soul with the 
experiences of the soul’s own life. These 
experiences themselves pass away, but their 
fruits remain. The spirit-self receives an 
abiding impression by having been linked 
with them. When the human spirit 
approaches an experience similar to one with 
which it has already been linked, it sees in it 
something familiar, and is able to take up a 
different attitude toward it than if it were 
facing it for the first time. This is the basis 
of all learning. And the fruits of learning are 
acquired capacities. The fruits of the transi- 
tory life are in this way graven on the eternal 
spirit. And do we not see these fruits? 
Whence spring the innate predispositions and 
talents described above as characteristic of the 


RE-EMBODIMENT AND DESTINY 77 


spiritual man? Surely only from capacities 
of one kind or another which the human being 
brings with him when he begins his earthly 
life. These capacities, in certain respects, 
resemble exactly those which we can also 
acquire for ourselves during life. Take the 
case of a genius. It is known that Mozart, 
when a boy, could write out from memory a 
long musical composition after hearing it only 
once. He was able to do this only because he 
could survey the whole at one glance. Within 
certain limits a man is also able during life 
to increase his capacity of rapid survey, of 
grasping combinations to such an extent that 
he then possesses new faculties. Lessing, 
indeed, has said of himself that by means of 
a talent for critical observation he had 
acquired for himself something that came 
near to being genius. One has either to regard 
such abilities founded on innate capacities 
with wonder as miracles, or one must consider 
them as fruits of experiences which the spirit- 
self has had through a soul. They have been 
graven on the spirit-self. And since they have 
not been implanted in this life, they have 
been in a former one. The human spirit is 


78 THEOSOPHY 


its own species. And just as man as a phys- 
ical being belonging to a species bequeaths 
his qualities within the species, so does the 
SPIRIT within ITs species, that is, within itself. 
IN EACH LIFE THE HUMAN SPIRIT APPEARS AS 
A REPETITION OF ITSELF WITH THE FRUITS OF 
ITS FORMER EXPERIENCES IN PREVIOUS LIVES. 
This life is consequently the repetition of 
another, and brings with it what the spirit- 
self has, by work, acquired for itself in the 
previous life. When the spirit-self absorbs 
something that can develop into fruit; it pene- 
trates itself with the life-spirit. Just as the 
life-body reproduces the form, from genus to 
genus, so does the life-spirit reproduce the soul 
from personal existence to personal existence. 

Thus the experiences of the soul become 
enduring not only within the boundaries of 
birth and death, but out beyond death. But 
the soul does not stamp its experiences only 
on the spirit which flashes up in it, it stamps 
them, as has been shown, on the outer world, 
also, through the DEED. What a man did yes- 
terday is to-day still present in its effects. A 
picture of the connection between cause and 
effect is given in the simile of sleep and death. 


RE-EMBODIMENT AND DESTINY 79 


Sleep has often been called the younger 
brother of death. I get up in the morning. 
Night has interrupted my consecutive activity. 
Now, under ordinary circumstances, it is not 
possible for me to begin my activity again just 
as I like. I must connect it with my doings of 
yesterday if there is to be order and coherence 
in my life. My actions of yesterday are the 
conditions predetermining those I have to do 
to-day. I have created my fate of to-day by 
what I did yesterday. I have separated myself 
for a while from my activity; but this activity 
belongs to me and draws me again to itself 
after I have withdrawn myself from it for a 
while. My past remains bound up with me; 
it lives on in my present, and will follow me 
into my future. If the effects of my deeds of 
yesterday were not to be my fate to-day, I 
should have had, not to AWAKE this morning, 
but to be newly created out of nothing. It 
would be absurd if under ordinary circum- 
stances I were not to occupy a house that I 
have had built for me. 

The human spirit is just as little newly 
created when it begins its earthly life as is a 
man newly created every morning. Let us try 


80 THEOSOPHY 


to make clear to ourselves what happens when 
an entrance into this life takes place. A phys- 
ical body, receiving its form through the laws 
of heredity, comes upon the scene. This body 
becomes the bearer of a spirit which repeats a 
previous life in a new form. Between the two 
stands the soul, which leads a self-contained 
life of its own. Its inclinations and disinclina- 
tions, its wishes and desires minister to it; it 
takes thought into its service. As sentient-soul 
it receives the impressions of the outer world 
and carries them to the spirit, in order that the 
spirit may extract from them the fruits that 
are for eternity. It plays, as it were, the part 
of intermediary; and its task is fully accom- 
plished when it is able to do this. The body 
forms impressions for the sentient-soul which 
transforms them into sensations, retains them 
in the memory as conceptions, and hands them 
over to the spirit to hold throughout eternity. 
The soul is really that through which man 
belongs to his earthly life. Through his body 
he belongs to the physical human species. 
Through it he is a MEMBER of this species. - 
With his spirit he lives in a higher world. 


RE-EMBODIMENT AND DESTINY 81 


The soul binds the two worlds for a time 
together. 

But the physical world on which the 
human spirit enters is no strange field of action 
to it. On it the traces of its actions are 
imprinted. Something in this field of action 
belongs to the spirit. It bears the impress of 
its being. It is related to it. As the soul 
formerly transmitted the impressions from the 
outer world to the spirit in order that they 
might become enduring in it, so now the soul, 
as the spirit’s organ, converts the capacities 
bestowed by the spirit into deeds which are 
also enduring through their effects. Thus the 
soul has actually flowed into these actions. In 
the effects of his actions man’s soul lives on in 
a second independent life. And it is inevita- 
ble that the human spirit should meet again 
the effect of these actions. For only the one 
part of my deed is in the outer world; the 
other is in myself. Let us make this clear by 
a simple example taken from natural science. 
Animals that once could see migrated to the 
caves of Kentucky, and have, through their 
life in them, lost their powers of sight. The 
existence in darkness has caused the eyes to 


82 THEOSOPHY 


be inactive. Consequently the physical and 
chemical activity that is present when seeing 
takes place is no longer carried on in these _ 
eyes. The stream of nourishment which was 
formerly expended on this activity now flows 
to other organs. These animals CAN NOW live 
only in these caves. They have by their act, 
by the immigration, created the conditions 
of their later lives. The immigration has 
become a part of their fate. A being that once 
acted has united itself with the results of the 
action. It is so also with the human spirit. It 
is only by having been active that the soul 
could have transmitted certain capacities to it. 
And these capacities correspond to the actions. 
By means of his actions, therefore, the 
human spirit has really carved his fate. Ina 
new life he finds himself linked to what he did 
in a former one. One may ask, “How can that 
be, when the human spirit on reincarnating 
finds itself in an entirely different world from 
that which it left at some earlier time?” This 
question is based on a very superficial concep- 
tion of the linkings of fate. If I change my . 
scene of action from Europe to America I 
find myself in entirely new surroundings. 


RE-EMBODIMENT AND DESTINY 83 


Nevertheless, my life in America depends 
entirely on my previous life in Europe. If I 
have been a mechanic in Europe, my life in 
America will shape itself quite differently 
from the way in which it would had I been a 
bank clerk. In the one case I should probably 
be surrounded in America by machinery, in the 
other by bank offices. In each case it is my 
previous life that decides my environment; it 
attracts to itself, as it were, out of the whole 
surrounding world, those things that are 
related to it. So it is with the spirit-self. It 
inevitably surrounds itself in a new life with 
that to which it is related from previous lives. 
And it is on this account that sleep is a good 
likeness for death. For the man during sleep 
is withdrawn from the field of action in which 
his fate waits for him. While one sleeps 
events in this field of action pursue their 
course. One has for a time no influence on 
this course of events. Nevertheless, our life 
on a new day depends on the effects of the 
deeds of the previous one. Our personality 
actually embodies or incarnates itself anew 
every morning in our world of action. What 
was separated from us at night is on the next 


84 THEOSOPHY 


day, as it were, spread out around us. So it 
is with the actions of the former embodiments 
or incarnations of man. They are bound to 
him as his destiny, as the life in the dark caves 
remains bound up with the animals who, 
through migration into them, have lost their 
powers of sight. Just as these animals can 
only live in the surroundings in which they 
have placed themselves, so the human spirit 
CAN only live in the surroundings which by 
its acts it has created for itself. There can be 
no more appropriate comparison than that of 
sleep with death. That I find in the morning 
a state of affairs which I on the previous day 
created, is brought about by the immediate 
progress of the events themselves. That I, 
when I reincarnate myself, find surroundings 
which correspond with the results of my deeds 
in a previous life, is brought about by the rela- 
tionship of my reincarnated spirit with the 
things in the world around. From this it 
stands out clearly how the SOUL forms a mem- 
ber of the constitution of man. The physical 
body is subject to the laws of heredity. The 
human spirit, on the contrary, has to incarnate 
over and over again, and its law consists in its 


RE-EMBODIMENT AND DESTINY 85 


bringing over the fruits of the former lives 
into the following ones. The soul lives in the 
present. But this life in the present is not inde- 
pendent of the previous lives. For the incar- 
nating spirit brings its destiny with it from its 
previous incarnations, and this destiny decides 
the kind of life. Whatever impressions the 
soul will be able to have, with what wishes it 
will be able to be gratified, what sorrows and 
joys spring forth for it, depend on the nature 
of the actions in the past incarnations of the 
spirit. The life of the soul is therefore the 
result of the self-created destiny of the human 
spirit. The course of man’s life between birth 
and death is therefore determined in a three- 
fold way. And he is by these means depend- 
ent in a threefold way on factors which lie ON 
THE OTHER SIDE of birth and death. The body 
is subject to the laws of heredity; the soul is 
subject to the self-created fate. One calls this 
fate created by the man himself his KARMA. 
The spirit is under the law of reémbodiment 
Or reincarnation. One can _ accordingly 
express the relationship between spirit, soul, 
and body in the following way as well. The 
spirit is ETERNAL; birth and death have domin- 


86 THEOSOPHY 


ion over the corporality according to the laws 
of the physical world; the soul-life, which is 
subject to destiny, links them together during 
an earthly life. 

All further knowledge of the being of man 
has to be preceded by acquaintance with the 
‘three worlds” to which he belongs. They 
are dealt with in the following chapters. 

Thinking which takes up an unprejudiced 
attitude toward the phenomena of life, not 
afraid to follow the thoughts resulting to their 
final consequences, can, by pure logic, arrive 
at the conviction of the law of karma and rein- 
carnation. Just as it is true that for the seer 
with the opened “spiritual eye,” past lives, 
like an opened book, face him as EXPERIENCE, 
so is it true that the TRUTH of it all becomes 
obvious to the unprejudiced REASON, 


CHAPTER III 


THE THREE WORLDS 
1. THE SOUL WORLD 


Our study of man has shown that he belongs 
to three worlds. From the world of physical 
corporality are taken the materials and 
forces building up his body. He has knowl- 
edge of this world through the perceptions of 
his external physical senses. Anyone trusting to 
THESE senses ALONE, and developing his per- 
ceptive abilities alone, can gain for himself no 
enlightenment concerning the two other 
worlds, the SOUL and the SPIRITUAL. A man’s 
ability to convince himself of the reality of a 
thing or a being depends on whether he has an 
organ of perception, a sense for it. It may, of 
course, easily lead to misunderstandings if one 
call the higher organs of perception spirit- 
ual SENSES, as is done here, for in speaking 
of “SENSES” one involuntarily connects with 


87 





88 THEOSOPHY 


them the thought “physical.” The physical 
world is in fact designated the “sensible,” in 
contradistinction to the “spiritual.” In order 
to avoid this misunderstanding, one must take 
into account that “higher senses” are spoken 
of here only in a comparative or metaphorical 
sense. As the physical senses perceive the 
physical world, the soul and spiritual senses 
perceive the soul and spiritual worlds. The 
expression “sense” will be used as meaning 
simply “organ of perception.” Man would 
have no knowledge of light and color had he 
not an eye able to sense light; he would know 
nothing of sound had he not an ear able to 
sense sound. In this connection the German 
philosopher Lotze rightly says, “Without a 
light-sensing eye, and a sound-sensing ear, the 
whole world would be dark and silent. There 
would be in it just as little light or sound as 
there could be toothache without the pain- 
feeling nerve of the tooth.” In order to see 
what is said here in the right light, one need 
only think how entirely different the world 
must reveal itself to man on the one hand, and 
on the other to the lower forms of animal life 
that have only a kind of touch sense or sense of 


THE THREE WORLDS 89 


feeling spread over the whole surface of their 
bodies. Light, color, and sound certainly 
cannot exist for them in the same way as for 
beings gifted with ears and eyes. The vibra- 
tions which the firing of a gun causes may 
liave an effect on them also if they reach them. 
But in order that these vibrations of the air 
should present themselves as a report an ear 
is necessary. And an eye is necessary in order 
that certain processes in the fine matter that 
one calls ether should revcal themselves as 
light and color. Man knows something about 
a being or thing only be because through one of 
his organs he receives its EFFECTS. 

~This relationship of man with the world of 
realities is excellently brought out by Goethe 
when he says: “It is really in vain that we try 
to express the nature of a thing. We become 
aware of EFFECTS, and a complete history of 
them would indeed embrace the nature of that 
thing. We endeavor in vain to describe the 
character of a man, but if instead we systemat- 
ically correlate his actions and deeds, a pic- 
ture of his character will present itself to us. 
Colors are the actions of light, actions and 
suffering . . . colors and light are indeed 


Qo THEOSOPHY 


linked in closest relationship, but we must 
think of them both as belonging to the whole 
of nature; for through them the whole of 
nature is engaged in revealing herself to the 
sense of the eye especially. In like manner 
nature reveals herself to another sense 

nature thus speaks downward to OTHER SENSES, 
to known, MISUNDERSTOOD, UNKNOWN senses; 
she thus speaks with herself and to us through 
a thousand phenomena. TO THE ATTENTIVE 
SHE IS NOWHERE EITHER DEAD OR SILENT.” 
It would not be correct were one to interpret 
this saying of Goethe’s as though by it the 
possibility of knowing the ESSENTIAL NATURE 
of a thing were being denied. Goethe does not 
mean that one perceives only the effects of 
a thing, and that the being hides itself behind 
them. He means rather that one should not 
speak at all of a “hidden being.” The being 
is not behind its revelation; it comes, on the 
contrary, into view through the revelation. 
But this being is in many respects so RICH that 
it can reveal itself to other senses in yet other 
forms. THAT which reveals itself belongs to 
the being ONLY—on account of the limitations 
of the senses—it is not the WHOLE being. This 


THE THREE WORLDS gl 


point of view of Goethe’s is entirely the theo- 
sophical one. 


As in the bod nd_ear develop into 
organs of perception, into senses for corporal 


occurrences, so is man able to develop in him- 
self eee epi a: organs of perception, 
through whi which the soul and spiritual worlds 
will be opened to him. For those who have 
not such higher senses, these worlds are “dead 
and silent,” just as for a being without eyes 
and ears the corporal world is “dark and 
silent.” It is true that the relation of man to 
these higher senses is rather different from his 
relations to the corporal senses. It is good 
Mother Nature who sees to it as a rule that 
these latter are developed in him. They come 
into existence without his help. But on the 
development of his higher senses he must work 
himself. If he wishes to perceive the soul and 
spirit worlds, he must develop soul and spirit 
as nature has developed his body so that he 
might perceive the corporal: world around 
him and guide himself in it. Such a develop- 
ment of the higher organs not yet developed 
for us by nature herself is not unnatural; for 
in the HIGHER SENSE all that man accom- 


92 THEOSOPHY 


plishes belongs ALSO to nature. Only he who 
wishes to maintain that man should remain 
standing at the stage at which he left the hand 
of nature could call the development of the 
higher senses unnatural. By him the sig- 
nificance of these organs is misunderstood, 
as indicated in the quotation from Goethe. 
Such a one might just as well oppose all 
education of man, for it also develops further 
the work of nature. And he would have to 
oppose especially operations upon those born 
blind. For almost the same thing happens to 
him who awakens his higher senses in himself 
as to the person born blind and operated upon. 
The world appears to him with new qualities, 
events, and facts, of which the physical senses 
reveal nothing to him. It is clear to him that 
through these higher organs he adds nothing 
arbitrarily to the reality, but that without them 
the essential part of this reality would have 
remained HIDDEN from him. The soul and 
spirit worlds are nothing ALONGSIDE or OUTSIDE 
the physical world; they are not separated in 
space from it. Just as for persons born blind 
and operated upon, the previously dark world 
rays out light and colors, so the things which 


THE THREE WORLDS 93 


previously were only corporal phenomena 
reveal their soul and spirit qualities to him 
who is, soul and spirit, AWAKENED. In addi- 
tion to this, however, this world then becomes 
filled with still other occurrences and beings 
that remain completely unknown to him 
whose soul and spirit senses are not awakened. 
The development of the soul and spirit 
senses will be spoken of in a more detailed way 
further on in this book. Here these higher 
worlds themselves will be described. Anyone 
who denies the existence of these worlds says 
nothing more than that he has not yet 
developed his higher organs. This is still the 
case with the greater part of mankind at the 
present stage of the world’s evolution. But 
the evolution of man is not terminated at any 
one stage; it must always progress. What 
will be here called the SOUL WORLD, is called 
in current theosophical literature the “astral,” 
the spirit world is called in it the “mental” 
world. 

One often involuntarily pictures the 
“higher organs” as too similar to the phys- 
ical ones. One should understand quite clearly 
that in these organs one has to do with spir- 


94 THEOSOPHY 


itual or soul formations. One ought not to 
expect, therefore, that what one perceives in 
the higher worlds is only a vaporous, rarefied 
matter. So long as one EXPECTS something of 
this kind, one can come to no clear idea as 
to what is exactly meant by “higher worlds.” 
For many persons it would not be at all as diffi- 
cult as it actually is to know something about 
these higher worlds, the elementary part, that 
is to say, if they did not form the idea that 
what they are to see is again merely physical 
matter rarefied. Because they presuppose 
something of this kind they, as a rule, do not 
at all wish to acknowledge the reality of that 
which is the essential part. They look upon 
it as unreal, refuse to acknowledge it as some- 
thing that satisfies them, and so on. The higher 
stages of spiritual development are certainly 
not easily accessible; but the lower, and that 
is already a great deal, would not be at all 
so difficult to reach if people would from the 
first free themselves from the prejudice 
which consists in picturing to themselves 
the soul and spiritual merely as a finer phys- 
ical. 

Just as we do not wholly know a man when 


THE THREE WORLDS gs 


we have formed a picture of his physical 
exterior only, so also we do not know the 
world around us if we only know in it what 
the physical senses reveal to us. And just 
as a photograph becomes intelligible and 
living to us when we have become so inti- 
mately acquainted with the person photo- 
graphed as to know his soul, so we can really 
understand the corporal world only if we 
learn to know its soul and spiritual basis. 
For this reason it is advisable to speak here, 
first about the higher, the soul and spirit 
worlds, and only then judge of the physical 
from the theosophical standpoint. 

Certain difficulties are met with at this 
present stage of civilization by anyone speak- 
ing about the higher worlds. For this age is 
great above all things in the knowledge and 
conquest of the physical world. Our words 
have, in fact, received their stamp and’ sig- 
nificance through being applied to this phys- 
ical world. Nevertheless we have to make 
use of these current words so as to form a 
link with something known. This opens the 
door to many misundertandings on the part of 
those who wish to trust to their external senses 


96 THEOSOPHY 


only. Much also can be expressed and indi- 
cated only by means of similes and resem- 
blances. This must be so, for such similes 
are a means by which a man is at first directed 
to these higher worlds, and through which his 
own ascent to them is furthered. (This will 
become evident in a later chapter, in which 
the development of the soul and spiritual 
organs of perception will be spoken of. To 
begin with, one MUST gain knowledge of the 
higher worlds by means of similes. Only then 
is man ready to acquire for himself the power 
to see into them.) 

As the matter and forces which compose 
and govern our stomach, our heart, our brain, 
our lungs, etc., come from the physical 
world, so do our soul qualities, our impulses, 
desires, feelings, passions, wishes, sensations, 
etc., come from the soul world. The soul of 
the human being is a member of this world, 
just as his body is part of the physical world 
of bodies. Should one wish to begin by 
pointing out a difference between the cor- 
poral and soul worlds, one would say that | 
the latter is in all its objects and entities much 
finer, more mobile, and plastic than the 


THE THREE WORLDS 97 


former. But it must be kept clearly in mind 
that on entering the soul world one enters a 
world entirely different from the physical. 
If, therefore, “coarser” and “finer” be spoken 
of in this respect, readers must be fully aware 
that one SUGGESTS by means of a comparison 
what is fundamentally different. It is the same 
with all that is said about the soul world in 
words borrowed from the world of physical 
corporality. Taking this into account, one 
can say that the formations and beings of the 
soul world consist in the same way of soul 
materials, and are directed in the same way by 
soul forces, as is the case in the physical world 
with physical materials and physical forces. 
Just as spacial extension and spacial move- 
ment are peculiar to corporal formations, so 
are excitability and impelling desire peculiar 
to the things and beings of the soul world. 
For this reason one describes the soul world 
as the world of desires or wishes, or as the 
world of longing. These expressions are bor- 
rowed from the human soul world. One must 
therefore hold clearly in view that the things 
in those parts of the soul world which lie out- 
side the human soul are just as different from 


98 THEOSOPHY 


the soul forces within it as the physical matter 
and forces of the external corporal world are 
different from the parts which compose the 
physical human body. (Impulse, wish, long- 
ing are names for the material of the soul 
world. To this matter theosophical literature 
gives the name of “astral.” If one wishes to 
refer specifically to the FORCES of the soul 
world, one speaks in Theosophy of “kama.” 
But it must not be forgotten that the distinc- 
tion between “matter” and “force” cannot be 
as sharply drawn as in the physical world. 
An instinct, an impulse, can be called “force” 
just as well as “matter.”’) 

On him who obtains a view of the soul world 
for the first time, the differences between it 
and the physical have a bewildering effect. 
But that is also the case when a previously 
inactive physical sense is being opened. The 
man born blind, when operated upon, has first 
to learn to guide himself through the world 
which he has previously known only by 
means of the sense of touch. Such a one, for 
example, sees the objects at first IN his own - 
eyes, then he sees them outside himself, but at 
first they appear to him as if painted on a flat 


THE THREE WORLDS 99 


surface. Only gradually does he grasp per- 
spective and the spacial distance between 
things. In the soul world entirely different 
laws prevail from those in the physical. Now 
there are many soul formations bound to those 
of the other worlds. The soul of man, for 
instance, is bound to the human body and to 
the human spirit. The occurrences one can 
observe in it are therefore influenced at the 
same time by the bodily and the spiritual 
worlds. One has to take this into account in 
observing the soul world, and one must take 
care not to ascribe to a law of the soul world 
occurrences due to the influence of another 
world. When, for example, a man sends out 
a wish, it is produced by a thought, a concep- 
tion of the spirit whose laws it accordingly fol- 
lows. One can formulate the laws of the phys- 
ical world while ignoring, for example, the 
influence of man on its occurrences, and the 
same thing is possible with regard to the soul 
world. 

An important difference between soul and 
physical occurrences can be expressed by say- 
ing that the interaction in the former is much 
more INWARD than in the latter. In phys- 


100 THEOSOPHY 


ical space there reigns, for example, the law 
of “impact.” When an ivory ball strikes 
another which is at rest, the latter moves in a 
direction which can be calculated from the 
motion and elasticity of the first. In the soul 
space the interaction of two forms which meet 
depends on their inner qualities. If they are 
in affinity they mutually interpenetrate each 
other and, as it were, grow together. They 
repel each other if their beings conflict. In 
physical space there are, for example, definite 
laws of vision. One sees distant objects per- 
spectively diminishing. When one looks down 
an avenue, the distant trees appear, according 
to the laws of perspective, to stand at shorter 
distances from each other than the near ones. 
In the soul space, on the contrary, all objects 
near and far appear to the clairvoyant at those 
distances from each other which are due to 
their inner nature. This is naturally a source 
of the most varied mistakes for those who enter 
the soul world, and wish to become at home 
there by the help of the rules which they bring 
with them from the physical world. 

One of the first things that a man must do in 
order to make his way about the soul world 


THE THREE WORLDS IOI 


is to realize that one distinguishes the various 
kinds of its forms in a similar manner to that 
in which one distinguishes solid, liquid, air, 
or gaseous bodies in the physical world. In 
order to be able to do that it is necessary to 
know the two basic forces which are the most 
important in it. They may be called sym- 
PATHY and ANTIPATHY. ‘The order to which 
a soul formation belongs is decided by the 
manner in which these basic forces work in 
it. The force with which one soul formation 
attracts others, seeks to fuse with them, to make 
its affinity with them effectual, must be desig- 
nated as SYMPATHY. ANTIPATHY, on_ the 
other hand, is the force with which soul for- 
mations repel, exclude each other in the soul 
world, with which they assert their separate 
identity. The part played in the soul world 
by a soul formation depends upon the propor- 
tions in which these basic forces are present 
init. One has to distinguish, in the first place, 
between three kinds of soul formations accord- 
ing to the manner in which sympathy and 
antipathy work in them. These kinds differ 
from each other in that sympathy and antipa- 
thy have in them definitely fixed mutual rela- 


102 THEOSOPHY 


tionships. In all three BOTH basic forces are 
present. Let us take, to begin with, a forma- 
tion of the first kind. It attracts other for- 
mations in its neighborhood by means of the 
sympathy ruling in it; but, besides this sym- 
pathy, there is at the same time present in it 
antipathy, through which it repels certain 
things in its surroundings. From the outside 
such a formation appears to be endowed with 
the forces of antipathy ONLY. This, however, 
is not the case. There is sympathy and antipa- 
thy in it, but the latter predominates. It has 
the upper hand over the former. Such for- 
mations play a SELF-SEEKING role in the soul 
space. They repel much that is around them, 
and lovingly attract but little to themselves. 
They therefore move through the soul space 
as unchangeable forms. The force of sympa- 
thy which is in them appears GREEDY. This 
GREED appears at the same time insatiable, as 
if it could not be satisfied, because the pre- 
dominating antipathy repels so much of what 
approaches that no satisfaction is possible. 
(Here we have to do with what is described 
in theosophical literature as the lowest part 
of the astral world.) Should one wish to 


THE THREE WORLDS 103 


compare this kind of soul formation with 
something in the physical world, one can say 
that it corresponds with the solid physical 
bodies. This region of soul matter may be 
called BURNING DEsiRE. The manner in 
which this Burning Desire is mingled in the 
souls of animals and men determines in them 
what one calls the lower sensual impulses, 
their dominating selfish instincts. 

The second kind of soul formations is that 
in which the two basic forces preserve a bal- 
-ance, in which, accordingly, antipathy and 
sympathy act with equal strength. They 
approach other formations with a certain 
neutrality and act on them as if related, but 
without especially attracting or repelling. 
They, as it were, erect no solid barrier between 
themselves and their surroundings. They 
constantly allow other formations in their 
surroundings to act on them; one can there- 
fore compare them with the liquids of the 
physical world. And there is nothing of greed 
in the way in which such formations attract 
others to themselves. The activity meant here 
is in process, for example, when the human 
soul receives the sensation of a certain color. 


104 THEOSOPHY 


If I have the sensation of a red color, I receive 
to begin with a NEUTRAL EXCITATION from 
my surroundings. Only when there is added 
to this excitation pleasure in the red color 
does another soul activity come into play. 
That which effects the NEUTRAL EXCITATION 
is the action of soul formations standing in 
such mutual relationship that sympathy and 
antipathy preserve an equal balance. One 
will have to describe the soul matter which 
comes under observation here as _ perfectly 
plastic and flowing. Not self-seeking like 
the first does it move about the soul space, but 
in such a way that its being receives impres- 
sions from all directions, and that it shows 
itself to have affinity with much _ that 
approaches it. An expression that may be 
used to designate it is FLOWING EXCITABILITY. 

The third stage of soul formations is that 
in which sympathy has the upper hand over 
antipathy. Antipathy produces the self- 
seeking self-assertion; this, however, retires in 
face of the liking for the things in the sur- 
roundings. Let us picture such a formation 
within the soul space. It appears as the center 
point of an attracting sphere which spreads 


THE THREE WORLDS 105 


over the objects in its surroundings. Such 
formations one must designate in a special 
sense as WISH SUBSTANCE. This designation 
appears to be the right one, because the attrac- 
tion so acts, even through the existing antipa- 
thy, as to bring the attracted objects within the 
soul formation’s own sphere. The sympathy 
thus receives a tone of selfishness. This wish 
substance may be likened to the air or gaseous 
bodies of the physical world. As a gas strives 
to expand on all sides, so does the wish sub- 
stance spread itself out in all directions. 
Higher grades of soul substance render 
themselves distinguishable by the fact that in 
them one of the basic forces, namely antipathy, 
retires completely, and sympathy alone shows 
itself as the one really effective. Now this is 
able to make its power felt within the parts of 
soul formation itself. These parts mutually 
attract each other. The force of sympathy 
within a soul formation comes to expression in 
what one calls LIKING. And each lessening of 
this sympathy is DISLIKING. Disliking is only 
a lessened liking, as cold is only a lessened 
warmth. Liking and disliking compose what 
lives in man as the world of EMOTIONS in 


106 THEOSOPHY 


the narrow sense of the word. FEELING is the 
life and activity of the soul within itself. 
What one calls the COMFORT of the soul de- 
pends on the way in which the feelings of lik- 
ing and disliking—attraction and repulsion— 
interact within the soul. 

A still higher grade is occupied by those 
soul formations whose sympathy does not 
remain enclosed within the region of their own 
life. They differ from the three lower grades, 
as does in fact the fourth also, in that in them 
the force of sympathy has no antipathy oppos- 
ing it to overcome. It is only through these 
higher orders of soul substance that the mani- 
fold variety of soul formations can unite and 
form a common soul world. In cases where 
antipathy comes into play, the soul formation 
strives toward another thing for sake of its 
own life, and in order to strengthen and enrich 
itself by means of the other. Where antipa- 
thy is silent the other thing is received as 
revelation, as information. This higher form 
of soul substance plays in the soul space a simi- 
lar role to that played by light in physical 
space. It causes a soul formation to suck in, 
as it were, the being or essence of others for 


THE THREE WORLDS 107 


their sakes; one could also say to let itself be 
rayed upon by them. Only by drawing upon 
these higher regions are the soul beings 
awakened to the true soul life. Their dull life 
in the darkness opens outward, and begins it- 
self to shine and ray out into the soul space; 
the sluggish, dull movement of the inner life 
which wishes to shut itself off through antipa- 
thy when the substances of the lower regions 
only are present, becomes force and mobility 
which arises from within, and, streaming, 
pours itself outward. The Flowing Excita- 
bility of the second region is only effective 
when formations meet each other. Then, 
indeed, the one streams over into the other. 
But CONTACT is here necessary. In the higher 
regions there prevails a free out-raying and 
out-pouring. (Rightly does one describe the 
essential nature of this region as an “out-ray- 
ing,” for the sympathy which is developed acts 
in such a way that one can use as symbol for it 
the expression taken from the action of light.) 
The soul pines from lack of the soul substances 
of the higher regions which give it life, as a 
plant degenerates in a dark cellar. 

SouL LicH?T, ACTIVE SOUL FORCE and the 


“08 THEOSOPHY 


true SOUL LIFE in the narrower sense belong 
to these regions, and thence pour themselves 
out to the soul beings. 

One has therefore to distinguish between 
three lower and three higher regions of the 
soul world. ‘These are linked by a fourth, so 
that there results the following division e 
soul world: 

1. Region of Burning Desire. 

i i 


2: Flowing Excitability. 

q. = eae Wishes: 

4. ‘“ “Attraction and Repulsion. 
ie =)“ Soul Tight. 

6. “ “Active Soul Force! 

7 SSO Soul hare: 


Through the first three regions the soul for- 
mations receive their qualities according to the 
proportion of sympathy and antipathy in them; 
through the fourth region sympathy is prevail- 
ingly active within the soul formations them- 
selves; through the three highest, the power 
of sympathy becomes ever more and more free; 
illumining and quickening, the soul substances 
of this region waft through the soul space, 
awakening that which, if left to itself, would 
lose itself in its own separate existence. 


a es 


THE THREE WORLDS 109 


For the sake of clearness it is here empha- 
sized, though it should be superfluous, that 
these seven divisions of the soul world do not 
represent regions separated from one another. 
Just as in the physical regions solid, liquid, and 
air or gaseous substances interpenetrate, so do 
Burning Desire, Flowing Excitability, and the 
forces of the World of Wishes in the soul 
world. And as in the physical world, warmth 
penetrates bodies and light illumines them, so 
is it the case in the soul world with desire and 
aversion, and with the Soul Light. Some- 
thing similar takes place with regard to the 
Active Soul Force and the true Soul Life. 


2. THE SOUL IN THE SOUL WORLD AFTER 
DEATH 


pathy and antipathy which, owing to their 
mutual relationship, bring about soul manifes- 
tations, such as desire, excitability, wish, lik- 
ing, and aversion, etc., are not only active 
between soul formations and soul formations, 
but they manifest themselves also in relation to 
the beings of the other worlds, the physical 


110 THEOSOPHY 


and the spiritual. While the soul lives in the 
body it participates to a certain extent in all 
that takes place in it. When the physical 
functions of the body proceed with regularity, 
there arise in the soul desire and comfort. If 
these functions are disturbed aversion and pain 
arise. And the soul has its share in the activi- 
ties of the spirit also; one thought fills it with 
joy, another with repulsion; a correct judg- 
ment has the approval of the soul, a false one 
its disapproval. The stage of evolution of a 
man depends, in fact, on whether the inclina- 
tions of his soul move more in one direction or 
in another. A man is the more perfect the more 
his soul sympathizes with the manifestations 
of the spirit; he is the more imperfect the more 
the inclinations of his soul are satisfied by the 
functions of the body. 

The spirit is the central point of man, the 
body the instrument by which the spirit 
observes and learns to understand the physical 
world and through it acts in it. But the soul 
is the intermediary between the two. Out of 
the physical impression which the vibrations . 
of air make on the ear, it awakens the sensing 
of the sound; it produces the PLEASURE in this 


THE THREE WORLDS III 


tone. All this it communicates to the spirit, 
which thus attains to the UNDERSTANDING of 
the physical world. A thought which arises 
in the spirit is changed by the soul into the 
WISH to realize it, and only through this can 
it become DEED, with the help of the body as 
instrument. Now man can fulfill his destiny 
only by allowing his spirit to direct the course 
of all his activity. The soul can (of itself) 
direct its inclinations just as well to the phys- 
ical as to the spiritual. It sends, as it were, 
its feelers down into the physical as well as up 
into the spiritual. By sinking them into the 
physical world its own being becomes pene- 
trated and colored by the nature of the phys- 
ical. But the spirit, because able to act in 
the physical world only through it as interme- 
diary, receives also in this way the direction 
toward the physical. Its formations are drawn 
to the physical by the forces of the soul. 
Observe, for example, the undeveloped man. 
The inclinations of his soul cling to the func- 
tions of his body. He feels pleasure only in the 
impressions made by the physical world on his 
senses. His intellectual life also is thereby 
completely drawn down into this region. His 


112 THEOSOPHY 


thoughts serve only to satisfy his demands on 
the physical life. The spiritual Self by living 
from incarnation to incarnation is intended to 
receive its direction ever increasingly out of 
the spiritual; its knowledge to be determined 
by the spirit of eternal Truth, its action by 
the eternal Goodness. 

Death, when regarded as a fact in the phys- 
ical world, signifies a change in the functions 
of the body. Itceases to be through its organ- 
ization the instrument of the soul and the 
spirit. Itshows itself henceforth to be entirely 
subject, as regards its functions, to the physical 
world and its laws. And it passes over into it 
in order to dissolve in it. Only these physical 
processes in the body can be observed after 
death by the physical senses. What happens 
then to soul and spirit escapes them. For even 
during life soul and spirit can be observed by 
the senses only in so far as they have external 
expressions in physical processes. After death 
THIS kind of expression is no longer possible. 
For this reason observation by means of the 
physical senses and science based on it, do NOT 
come under consideration in reference to the 
fate of the soul and spirit AFTER DEATH. Here 


THE THREE WORLDS 113 


a higher knowledge steps in, based on observa- 
tion of the events in the soul and spirit worlds. 

After the spirit has released itself from the 
body it continues to be united with the soul. 
And as, during physical life, the body chains 
it to the physical world, the soul now chains 
it to the soul world. But it is not in this 
soul world that the spirit’s true primordial 
being is to be found. The soul world is 
intended to serve merely as its connecting link 
with the scene of its actions, the physical 
world. In order to appear in a new incarna- 
tion with a more perfect form it must draw 
force and strength from the spiritual world. 
But through the soul it has become entangled 
in the physical world. It is bound to a 
soul being which is penetrated and colored 
by the nature of the physical, and through 
this it has itself acquired a tendency in this 
direction. After death the soul is no longer 
bound to the body, but only to the spirit. It 
lives now within soul surroundings. Only 
the forces of this soul world can there- 
fore have an effect on it. And at first the 
spirit also is bound to this life of the soul 
in the soul world. It is bound to it in the 


114 THEOSOPHY 


same way as it is bound to the body during 
physical incarnation. The time when the 
body is to die is determined by the laws of the 
BoDY. Speaking generally, in fact, it must be 
said it is not that the soul and spirit forsake 
the body, but that the body is set free by them 
when its forces are no longer able to act after 
the manner of the human organization. The 
same relationship exists between soul and 
spirit. The soul sets the spirit free to pass 
into the higher, the spiritual world, when its 
forces are no longer able to function as after 
the manner of the human soul-organism. The 
spirit is set free the moment the soul has 
handed over to dissolution what it can only 
experience in the body, and retains only that 
which remains over, which can live on with 
the spirit. This retained. extract, which, 
although experienced in the body, can, never- 
theless as fruit, be stamped on the spirit, con- 
nects the soul with the spirit in the pure, 
spiritual world. 

In order to learn the fate of the soul 
after death, therefore, one has to observe its - 
process of dissolution. It had the task of 
giving the spirit its direction toward the 


THE THREE WORLDS 115 


physical. The moment it has fulfilled THIS 
task the soul takes the direction to the spirit- 
ual. In fact, the nature of its task would cause 
it to be henceforth only spiritually active when 
the body falls away from it, that is, when it 
can no longer be a CONNECTING LINK. And so 
it would be, had it not, owing to its life in the 
body, been influenced by it and in its inclina- 
tions attracted to it. Were it not for this color- 
ing received through the body it would at 
once, on being disembodied, follow the laws 
of the spiritual soul world only, and manifest 
no further inclination to the sensible world. 
This is what would happen if a man on dying 
lost completely all interest in the earthly 
world, if all desires, wishes, etc., attaching to 
the existence he has left had been completely 
satisfied. To the extent to which this is not 
the case, the unsatisfied part of the soul per- 
sists in its longings for the physical. 

To avoid confusion we must here carefully 
distinguish between what chains man to the 
world in such a way that it can be made good 
in any following incarnation, and that which 
chains him to ONE particular incarnation, that 
is, to the immediately preceding one. The 


116 THEOSOPHY 


first is made good by means of the law of des- 
tiny or Karma; but the other can only be got 
rid of by the soul after death. 

After death there follows, for the human 
spirit, a time during which the soul is shaking 
off its inclinations toward the physical exist- 
ence, in order once more to follow the laws of 
the spiritual soul world only and set the spirit 
free. It is natural that this time will last 
the longer the more the soul was bound to the 
physical. It will be short in the case of a 
man who has clung little to the physical life, 
long, on the other hand, for one who has so 
completely bound up his interests with it that 
at death many desires, wishes, etc., still live in 
the soul. 

The easiest way to gain an idea of the con- 
dition in which the soul lives during the time 
immediately after death is afforded by the 
following consideration. Let us take the 
somewhat crass example, the enjoyment of the 
bon vivant. His pleasure consists in the tick- 
ling of the palate by food. The pleasure is 
naturally not bodily, but belongs to the soul. 
The pleasure lives in the soul, as also does 
the desire for the pleasure. But for the 


THE THREE WORLDS 117 


SATISFACTION of the desire the corresponding 
bodily organs, the palate, etc., are necessary. 
After death the soul has not immediately 
lost such a desire, but it no longer possesses the 
bodily organ which provides the means for 
satisfying the desire. For another reason, 
but one which acts in the same way only far 
more strongly, the man is now as if he were 
suffering burning thirst in a region in the 
length and breadth of which there is no 
water. The soul thus suffers burning pain 
from the deprivation of the pleasure because 
it has laid aside the bodily organ by which it 
can experience it. It is the same with all that 
the soul yearns for and that can only be satis- 
fied through the bodily organs. This con- 
dition (of burning privation) lasts until the 
soul has learned not to long any more for that 
which can only be satisfied through the body. 
The time passed in this condition is usually 
called in Theosophy “Kamaloca” (region of 
desires, although it has of course nothing to 
do with a locality). 

When the soul enters the soul world after 
death it becomes subject to the laws of that 
world. The laws act on it, and on their action 


118 THEOSOPHY 


depends the manner in which its inclinations 
toward the physical are destroyed. The ways 
in which they act on it must differ according 
to the kinds of soul substances and soul forces 
in whose domain it is placed at the time. Each 
of these kinds will make its purifying, cleans- 
ing influence felt. The process which takes 
place here consists in the gradual conquering 
of all antipathy in the soul by the forces of 
sympathy, and in bringing this sympathy itself 
to its highest pitch. For through this highest 
degree of sympathy with the whole of the rest 
of the soul world, the soul will, as it were, 
merge into it, become one with it; then is it 
utterly emptied of its self-seeking; it ceases 
to exist as a being inclined to the physically 
sensible existence; the spirit is set free - 
through it. The soul therefore purifies itself 
through all the regions of the soul world 
described above until, in the region of perfect 
sympathy, it becomes one with the whole 
soul world. That the spirit itself is in bondage 
until the last moment of the liberation of its 
soul is due to the fact that, through its 
life with it, it has developed a complete 
affinity. This relationship is much greater 


THE THREE WORLDS 119 


than the one with the body. For the spirit 
is bound directly to the soul, but only indi- 
rectly through the soul to the body. The 
soul is, in fact, the spirit’s own life. For this 
reason the spirit is not bound to the decaying 
body, though it is bound to the soul! gradually 
freeing itself. On account of the immediate 
bond between the spirit and the soul, the spirit 
can feel free with the soul only when the lat- 
ter has itself become one with the whole soul 
world. 

In so far as the soul world is the abode of 
man immediately after death it is called 
“Kamaloca,” the “Region of Desires.” The 
different religious systems which have embod- 
ied in their doctrines a knowledge of these 
conditions know this “Region of Desires” by 
the name of “purgatory,” “cleansing fire,” and 
so on. 

The lowest region of the soul world is that 
of Burning Desire. By it everything in the 
soul that has to do with the coarsest, lowest, 
selfish desires of the physical life is rooted 
out of the soul after death. For through such 
desires it is exposed to the effects of the 
forces of this soul region. The unsatisfied 


120 THEOSOPHY 


desires which have remained from physical 
life furnish the points of attack. The sym- 
pathy of such souls extends only to what can 
nourish their selfish natures; it is greatly 
exceeded by the antipathy which floods every- 
thing else. Now the desires aim at physical 
enjoyments which cannot be satisfied in the 
soul world. ‘The craving is intensified to its 
highest degree by this impossibility of satis- 
faction. But at the same time owing to this 
impossibility it is forced to die out gradually. 
The burning lusts gradually exhaust them- 
selves, and the soul has learned by experience 
that the only means of preventing the suffer- 
ing that must come from such longings lies in 
killing them out. During the physical life 
satisfaction is constantly being repeated. By 
this means the pain of the burning lusts is 
covered over by a kind of illusion. After 
death, in the “fire cleansing,” the pain comes 
into evidence quite unveiled. The most fear- 
ful sufferings are laid bare. A dark, gloomy 
state is it in which the soul thus finds itself. 
Of course only those persons whose desires 
are directed during physical life to the coarsest 
things can fall into this condition. Natures 


THE THREE WORLDS 121 


with few lusts go through it without noticing 
it, for they have no affinity with it. It must 
be stated that, in general, souls are the longer 
influenced by the Burning Desire the more 
closely they have become bound up with that 
fire during life, and the more they require on 
that account to be purified in it. 

A second class of things in the soul world 
is of such a nature that sympathy and 
antipathy preserve an equal balance in them. 
In so far as a human soul is in a similar con- 
dition after death it will be influenced by 
these things for a time. The giving of one- 
self up entirely to the external glitter of life 
and to joy in the swiftly-succeeding impres- 
sions of the senses, brings about this condi- 
tion. Many people live in it. They allow 
themselves to be influenced by each worth- 
less trifle of everyday life; but, as their sym- 
pathy is attached to no one thing in particular, 
the influences quickly pass. Everything that 
does not belong to this region of empty noth- 
ings is repellent to such persons. If the soul 
experiences this condition after death without 
the presence of the physical objects which are 
necessary for its satisfaction, the condition 


122 THEOSOPHY 


must needs die out ultimately. Naturally the 
privation which precedes its complete extinc- 
tion in the soul is full of suffering. This state 
of suffering is the school for the destruction 
of the illusion in which such persons are com- 
pletely wrapped up during physical life. 

Thirdly there come under consideration 
in the soul world the things with predominat- 
ing sympathy, those in whose natures WISH 
predominates. The effects of their activity 
are experienced by souls that retain an 
atmosphere of wishes after death. These 
wishes also gradually die out on account of 
the impossibility of their being satisfied. 

The region of Attraction and Repulsion 
which has been described above as the 
fourth, exposes the soul to special trials. 
As long as the soul dwells in the body 
it shares all that concerns it. The inner surge 
life of attraction and repulsion is bound up 
with the body. It causes the soul’s feeling of 
well-being and comfort, dislike and discom- 
fort. Man feels during his physical life that 
his body is himself, what one calls the FEELING 
OF SELF springs from this. And the more sen- 
sually inclined people are, the more does their 


THE THREE WORLDS 123 


feeling of self take on this characteristic. 
After death the body, the object of this feeling 
of self, is lacking. On this account the soul, 
with which the feeling has remained, feels as 
if EMPTIED OUT. A feeling as if it had lost 
itself befalls it. This continues until the soul 
has recognized that the true man does not 
lie in the physical. The operations of this 
fourth region on the soul accordingly destroy 
the illusion of the bodily self. The soul, at 
length, learns to stop feeling that this cor- 
porality is an essential reality. It is cured and 
purified of its attachment to embodiment. In 
this way it has conquered that which chains 
it strongly to the physical world, and can 
unfold fully the forces of sympathy which flow 
outward. It has, so to say, broken free from 
itself, and is ready to pour itself with full 
sympathy into the common soul world. 

It should not pass unnoted that the tor- 
ments of this region are suffered to an 
especial degree by suicides. They leave their 
physical body in an artificial way, while all 
the feelings connected with it remain 
unchanged. In the case of a natural death the 
decay of the body is accompanied by a 


124 THEOSOPHY 


partial dying out of the feelings of attachment 
to it. In the case of suicides there are, in 
addition to the torment caused by the 
feeling of having been suddenly emptied out, 
the unsatisfied desires and wishes on account 
of which they have deprived themselves of 
their bodies. 

The FIFTH stage of the soul world is that of 
SOUL LIGHT. In it sympathy with others has 
already reached a high degree of power. 
Souls are connected with it in so far as they 
have not during their physical lives entirely 
devoted themselves to satisfying lower neces- 
sities, but have had joy and pleasure in their 
surroundings. Enthusiasm for nature, for 
example, in so far as it has borne something 
of a sensuous character undergoes cleansing 
here. It is necessary, however, to distinguish 
clearly THIS kind of love of nature from that 
higher living in nature which is of the spirit- 
ual kind, and which seeks for the spirit that 
reveals itself in the things and events of 
nature. This kind of feeling for nature is one 
of the things that develop the spirit itself and 
establish something permanent in the spirit. 
But one must distinguish between THIS feel- 


THE THREE WORLDS 125 


ing for nature and such pleasure in nature as 
is based on the senses. In regard to this the 
soul requires purification just as well as in 
regard to other inclinations based on the mere 
physical existence. Many people hold, as a 
kind of ideal, arrangements which minister to 
sensuous welfare, and a system of education 
which results above all in the production of 
ensuous comfort. One cannot say of them 
thar tney tortie: only their selfish impulses, 
but their souls are, nevertheless, directed to 
the physical world, and must be cured of this 
by the prevailing force of sympathy in the 
fifth region of the soul world in which these 
external means of satisfaction are lacking. 
The soul here recognizes gradually that this 
sympathy must take other directions, and 
these are found in the outpouring of the soul 
into the soul region, which is brought about 
by sympathy with the soul surroundings. 
Those souls also that demand from their 
religious observances mainly an enhancement 
of their sensuous welfare, whether it be that 
their longing goes out to an earthly or a 
heavenly paradise, are purified here. They 
find this paradise in the “Soul-land,” but only 


126 THEOSOPHY 


for the purpose of seeing through its worth- 
lessness. These are, of course, merely a few 
detached examples of purifications which 
take place in this fifth region. They could 
be multiplied indefinitely. 

By means of the SIXTH region, that of 
Active Soul Force, the purification of souls 
thirsting for action takes place, souls whose 
activity does not bear an egotistical character, 
but springs, nevertheless, from the sensuous 
satisfaction it affords them. Such natures, 
viewed superficially, quite convey the impres- 
sion of being idealists; they show themselves 
to be persons ‘capable of he Ina 
deeper sense, however, thé-chief thing with 
them is the enhancement of a sensuous feeling 
of pleasure. Many artistic natures and such 
as give themselves up to scientific activity 
because it pleases them, belong to this class. 
What binds these people to the physical world 
is the belief that art and science exist for the 
sake of such pleasure. They have not yet 
learned to place these at the service of the 
world’s evolution, and thereby to place them- 
selves at its service. 

The SEVENTH region, that of the real SOUL 


THE THREE WORLDS 127 


LIFE, frees man of his last inclination to the 
sensibly physical world. Each preceding 
region divests the soul of whatever has affinity 
with it. What now still envelops the spirit 
is the belief that its activity should be entirely 
devoted to the physical world. There are 
individuals who, though highly gifted, do not 
think about much over and above the occur- 
rences of the physical world. This belief can 
be called materialistic. It must be destroyed, 
and this is done in the seventh region. There 
these souls see that they have no objects for 
their materialistic thinking. Like ice in the 
sun this belief of the soul melts away. The 
soul being is now absorbed into its own world. 
The spirit, free from all fetters, rises to the 
regions where it lives in its own surroundings 
only. The soul has completed its previous 
earthly task, and after death any traces of this 
task that remained fettering the spirit have dis- 
solved. By overcoming the last trace of the 
earth, the soul is itself given back to its ele- 
ments. 

One sees by this description that the experi- 
ences in the soul world, and also the condi- 
tions of the soul life after death, gain an ever 


128 THEOSOPHY 


friendlier appearance the more a man has 
shaken off the low elements that adhere to him 
from his earthly union with the physical cor- 
porality. The soul will belong for a longer or 
shorter time to one or another region according 
to its physical life. Where the soul feels itself 
to be in affinity, there it remains until the affin- 
ity is extinguished. Where no relationship 
exists, it goes on its way untouched. 

It was intended that only the fundamental 
characteristics of the soul world, and the out- 
standing features of the life of the soul in this 
world, should be described here. This applies 
also to the following descriptions of the spirit 
land. I would exceed the prescribed limits 
of this book were further characteristics of 
these higher worlds to be gone into. For the 
special relationships and the lapse of time, 
which are quite different there from those in 
the physical world, can only be spoken about 
intelligibly when one is prepared to deal with 
them in full detail. References of importance 
in this connection will be found in my “Out- 


line of Occult Science” (“Geheimwissenschaft 


im Umriss,” Altmann’s Verlag, Leipsig). 


THE THREE WORLDS 129 


3. THE SPIRIT LAND 


Before the spirit can be observed on its fur- 
ther pilgrimage the land which it enters must 
first be examined. It is the “World of the 
Spirit.” (In theosophical literature this is 
called the “mental” world. Here, the expres- 
sion “World of the Spirit” or “Spirit-land” 
will be used.) ‘This world is so unlike the 
physical that all that is said about it will 
appear fantastic to him who is willing to trust 
his physical senses only. And what has already 
been said in regard to the world of the soul 
holds good here to a still higher degree; that 
is, that one has to use analogies in order to 
describe it. For our speech, which for the 
most part serves only for the realities of the 
senses, is not richly blessed with expressions 
for the “Spirit-land.” It is therefore espe- 
cially necessary here to ask the reader to under- 
stand much that is said as an INDICATION only. 
For everything that is described here is so 
unlike the physical world that it can only in 
this way be depicted. The author is ever con- 
scious of how little this account can really 
resemble the experiences of this region owing 


130 THEOSOPHY 


to the imperfection of our speech, calculated, 
as it is, to be our medium of expression for 
the physical world. 

It must above all things be emphasized that 
this world is woven out of the material of 
which human thought consists. But thought, 
as it lives in man, is only a shadow picture, a 
phantom of its true being. As the shadow of 
an object on the wall is related to the real 
object which throws this shadow, so is the 
thought that springs up in man related to the 
being in the spirit land which corresponds to 
this thought. Now when the SPIRITUAL sense 
of man is awakened he really perceives this 
thought-being just as the eye of the senses per- 
ceives the table or the chair. He goes about in 
a region of thought-beings. The corporeal eye 
perceives the lion, and the corporeal thinking 
THINKS merely the thought “lion” as a phan- 
tom, a shadow picture. The SPIRITUAL eye 
sees in Spirit-land the thought “lion” as really 
and actually as the corporeal eye sees the phys- 
ical lion. Here we may refer to the analogy 
already used regarding the soul land. Just . 
as the surroundings of a man born blind and 
operated upon appear all at once with the new 


THE THREE WORLDS 131 


qualities of color and light, so are the sur- 
roundings of the person who learns to use his 
SPIRITUAL eye seen to be filled with a new 
world, the world of LIVING thoughts or SPIRIT 
BEINGS. 

There are to be seen in this world, first, the 
SPIRITUAL ARCHETYPES of all things and 
beings which are present in the physical and 
in the soul world. Imagine the picture of a 
painter existing in the mind before it is 
painted. This gives an analogy to what is 
meant by the expression ARCHETYPE. It does 
not concern us here that the painter has per- 
haps not had such an Archetype in his mind 
before he paints, and that it only gradually 
develops and becomes complete during the 
practical work. In the real “World of Spirit” 
there are such Archetypes for all things, and 
the physical things and beings are COPIES of 
these Archetypes. When any person who 
trusts only his outer senses denies this 
archetypal world, and holds Archetypes to be 
merely abstractions which the intellect, by 
comparing the objects of the senses, arrives at, 
it is quite to be understood; for such a one 
simply cannot see in this higher world; he 


132 THEOSOPHY 


knows the thought world only in its shadowy 
abstractness. He does not know that the per- 
son with spiritual vision is as familiar with the 
spirit beings as he is with his dog or his cat, 
and that the archetypal world has a far more 
intense reality than the world of the physical 
senses. 

The first look into this “Spirit-land” is still 
more bewildering than that into the soul 
world. For the Archetypes in their true form 
are very unlike their sensible copies. They 
are, however, just as unlike their SHADOWS, 
the abstract thoughts. In the spiritual world 
all is in continuous, mobile activity, a ceaseless 
‘Creating. A state of rest, a remaining in one 
place, such as one has in the physical world, 
does not exist here. For the Archetypes are 
CREATIVE BEINGS. They are the master build- 
ers of all that comes into being in the physical 
world and the soul world. Their forms 
change rapidly; and in each Archetype lies 
the possibility of assuming myriads of spe- 
cialized forms. They, as it were, let different 
shapes well up out of them, and scarcely is one - 
produced than the Archetype prepares to pour 
forth the next one. The Archetypes are 


THE THREE WORLDS 133 


telated to each other in varying degrees of 
closeness. They do not work singly. The 
one requires the help of the other in its cre- 
ating. Often innumerable Archetypes work 
together in order that this or that being in the 
soul or physical world may arise. 

Besides what is to be perceived by “spirit- 
ual sight” in this “Spirit-land,” there is some- 
thing else experienced that is to be regarded as 
“spiritual hearing.” As soon, that is to say, as 
the clairvoyant rises out of the soul world into 
the spirit world the Archetypes that are per- 
ceived become sounding as well. The observer 
feels as if he were in an ocean of tones. And 
in these tones, in these spiritual chimes, the 
Beings of the spirit world express themselves. 
The primordial laws of their existence express 
their mutual relationships and affinities in the 
intermingling of their sounds, their harmo- 
nies, melodies, and rhythms. What the intel- 
lect perceives in the physical world as law, as 
idea, reveals itself to the “spiritual ear” as a 
kind of music. (Hence the Pythagoreans/ 
called these perceptions of the spiritual world) 
the “music of the spheres.” To the possessor, 
of the “spiritual ear” this “music of the 


134 THEOSOPHY 


spheres” is not something merely figurative, 
allegorical, but a SPIRITUAL REALITY well 
known to him.) If one wishes to gain a con- 
ception of this “spiritual music” one has to lay 
aside all ideas of the music of the senses as per- 
ceived by the material ear. For it is here a 
matter of “spiritual perception” and therefore 
of a kind which must remain silent for the 
“ear of the senses.” In the following descrip- 
tions of the “Spirit-land” reference to this 
“spiritual music” will for the sake of simplic- 
ity be omitted. One has only to form a men- 
tal picture in which everything described as 
“Type,” as “shining with light,” is at the same 
time SOUNDING. Each color, each perception 
of light represents a spiritual tone, and every 
combination of colors corresponds with a har- 
mony, a melody, etc. For one must hold 
clearly in mind that even where the sounding 
prevails, perception by means of the “spirit- 
ual eye” by no means ceases. The sounding is 
merely added to the shining. Where, there- 
fore, Archetypes, the Primal Types, are 
spoken of in the following pages, the Primal 
Tones are to be thought of as also present. 
Now it is necessary in the first place to 


THE THREE WORLDS 135 


distinguish the different kinds of Archetypes. 
In the “Spirit-land” also one has to differ- 
entiate numerous grades or regions in order to 
steer one’s way among them. Here also, as in 
the soul world, the different regions are not to 
be thought of as laid one above the other like 
strata, but mutually interpenetrating and suf- 
fusing each other. The FIRST region contains 
the “Archetypes” of the physical world in so 
far as it is not endowed with life. The Arche- 
types of the minerals are to be found here— 
also those of the plants; but the latter only in 
so far as they are purely physical, that is, in 
so far as one does not take into account the 
life in them. In the same way one finds here 
the physical forms of the animals and of 
human beings. This does not exhaust all that 
is to be found in this region, but merely illus- 
trates it by the readiest examples. This region 
forms the basic structure of the “Spirit-land.” 
It can be likened to the solid land of our phys- 
ical earth. It forms the continental masses of 
the “Spirit-land.” Its relationship with the 
physical, corporal world can only be described 
by means of an illustration. One gains some 
idea of it in the following way. One has to 


136 THEOSOPHY 


picture a limited space filled with physical 
bodies of the most varied kinds. Then think 
these bodies away and conceive in their place 
Cavities in space having their forms. The 
intervening spaces, on the other hand, which 
were previously empty one must think of as 
filled with the most varied forms, having mani- 
fold relationships with the former bodies. 
This is somewhat like the appearance pre- 
sented by the lowest region of the Archetypal 
world. In it the things and beings which 
become embodied in the physical world are 
present as “spacial cavities.” And in the 
intervening spaces the mobile activity of the 
Archetypes (and the “spiritual music”) plays 
out its course. During their formation into 
physical forms the spacial cavities become, 
as it were, filled up with physical matter. He 
who looks into space with both physical and 
spiritual eyes sees the physical bodies and, in 
between, the mobile activity of the creative 
Archetypes. 

The SECOND region of the “Spirit-land” 
contains the Archetypes of life. But this life 
forms here a perfect unity. It streams 
through the world of spirit like a fluid ele- 


THE THREE WORLDS 137 


ment, as it were, like blood pulsating through 
all. It may be likened to the sea and the water 
systems of the physical earth. The manner 
in which it is distributed, however, is more 
like the distribution of blood in the animal 
body than that of the seas and rivers. One 
could describe this second stage of the “Spirit- 
land” as Flowing Life, formed of thought ma- 
terial. In this element are the creative Primal 
Forces producing everything that appears in 
the physical reality as living being. Here it 
is evident that all life is a unity, that the life 
in me is related to the life of all my fellow 
creatures. 

The Archetypes of all soul formations must 
be designated as the THIRD region of the 
“Spirit-land.” Here one finds oneself in a 
much finer and rarer element than in the first 
two regions, To use a comparison, one can 
call it the AIR or atmosphere of the “Spirit- 
land.” Everything that goes on in the souls 
of both the other worlds has here its spiritual 
counterpart. Here all feelings, sensations, 
instincts, passions, etc., are again present, but 
in a spiritual way. The atmospheric events 
in the air region correspond with the sorrows 


138 THEOSOPHY 


and joys of the creatures in the other worlds. 
The longing of the human soul is here per- 
ceived as a gentle zephyr; an outbreak of pas- 
sion is like a stormy blast. He who has the 
ability to perceive here notes the sigh of every 
creature should he direct his attention to it. 
One can, for example, observe at times some- 
thing like a loud storm with flashing light- 
ning and rolling thunder; and, if one investi- 
gates the matter, one finds that the passions of 
a battle waged on earth are expressed in such 
“spirit tempests.” 

The Archetypes of the FOURTH region are 
not immediately related to the other worlds. 
They are in certain respects Beings who gov- 
ern the Archetypes of the three lower regions 
and render possible their working together. 
They are accordingly occupied with the 
ordering and grouping of these more sub- 
ordinate Archetypes. From this region, 
therefore, a more comprehensive activity 
issues than from the lower ones. 

The FIFTH, SIXTH, and SEVENTH regions 
differ essentially from the preceding ones. 
For the Beings in them supply the Arche- 
types with the IMPULSES to their activity. In 


THE THREE WORLDS 139 


them one finds the creative forces of the 
Archetypes themselves. He who is able to 
rise to these regions makes acquaintance with 
the PURPOSES which underly our world. The 
Archetypes lie here, as yet, like living germ- 
points, ready to assume the most manifold 
forms of thought-beings. If these germ-points 
are guided into the lower regions they well 
out, as it were, and manifest themselves in 
the most varied shapes. (It is for this reason 
that in theosophical literature these three 
higher regions of the “Spirit-land” are called 
the Arupa, in contrast with the four lower, 
which are called the Rupa regions. Arupa 
means formless; Rupa, having form.) The 
ideas through which the human spirit mani- 
fests itself creatively in the physical world 
are the reflection, the shadow, of these Germ 
Thought-beings of the higher spiritual world. 
The observer with the spiritual ear who rises 
from the lower regions of the “Spirit-land” to 
these higher ones, becomes aware that sounds 
and tones are changed into a “spiritual lan- 
guage.” He begins to perceive the “spirit- 
ual word” through which the things and 
beings do not now make known to him their 


140 THEOSOPHY 


nature in music alone, but express it in 
“words.” They say to him what one calls in 
“spirit science” their “eternal name.” 

One must picture to oneself that these 
Germ Thought-beings are of a composite 
nature. Out of the element of the thought 
world only the germ-sheath, as it were, is 
taken. And this surrounds the true LIFE 
KERNEL. With it we have reached the con- 
fines of the “three worlds.” For the 
“KERNEL” has its origin in still higher worlds. 
When man was described above according to 
his components this “Life kernel” of the 
human being was mentioned, and its com- 
ponents were called “life spirit” and “spirit 
man.” (Theosophical literature applies to 
these the names budhi and atma.) There are 
similar “Life kernels” for other Beings in the 
Cosmos. They originate in higher worlds and 
are placed in the three described, in order to 
accomplish their tasks in them. 

The human spirit will now be followed on 
its further pilgrimage through the “S pirit- 
land” between two embodiments or incarna- 
tions. While doing this the relationships and 


THE THREE WORLDS 141 


distinguishing characteristics of this “land” 
will once more come clearly into view. 


4. THE SPIRIT IN SPIRIT-LAND AFTER 
DEATH 


When the human spirit on its way between 
two incarnations has passed through this 
“world of souls’ (Kamaloca), it enters the 
“Land of Spirits” to remain there until it is 
ripe for a new bodily existence. (The theo- 
sophical name for this region is “Devachan.’’) 
One can only understand the significance of 
this sojourn in “Spirit-land” when able to 
interpret in the right way the aim and end of 
the pilgrimage of man during his incarna- 
tions. While man is incarnated in the phys- 
ical body he works and creates in the physical 
world. And he works and creates in it as a 
SPIRITUAL BEING. He imprints on the phys- 
ical forms, on corporeal materials and forces, 
that which his spirit thinks out and develops. 
He has therefore, as a messenger of the spir- 
itual world, to incorporate the spirit in the 
corporal world. Only by being embodied can 
a man work in the world of bodies. He 
must wrap physical matter around his spirit 


142 THEOSOPHY 


so that, through the body, he can act on the 
other bodies around, and so that they can act 
on him. But what acts through this physical 
corporality of man is the SPIRIT. From it flow 
the PURPOSES, the direction its work is to take 
in the physical world. . Now, as long as the 
spirit works in the physical body, it cannot as 
a spirit live in its true form. It can, as it were, 
only shine through the VEIL OF THE PHYSICAL 
existence. For, as a matter of fact, the 
thought life of man really belongs to the spir- 
itual world; and, as it appears in the physical 
existence, is true form is veiled. One can also 
say that the thought life of the physical man 
is a shadow, a reflection of the true, spiritual 
being to whom it belongs. Thus, during phys- 
ical life, the spirit, through the physical body 
as an instrument, interacts with the earthly 
corporal world. 

Now, although it is exactly in action on the 
physical corporal world that one of the tasks of 
the spirit of man lies as long as he is proceed- 
ing from incarnation to incarnation, it could 
not by any means carry out this task as it ought 
if it led an embodied existence only. For the 
purposes and goals of the earthly task are 


THE THREE WORLDS 143 


just as little developed and gained within the 
earthly incarnation as the plan of a house 
comes into existence on the site on which the 
laborers work. Just as this plan is worked 
out in the offices of the architect, so are the 
aims and purposes of the earthly creative 
activities worked out and developed in the 
“Land of Spirits.’ The spirit of man has 
always to live again in this land between two 
incarnations in order to be able to equip him- 
self with what he takes with him on leaving it 
and, armed with that, to approach the work in 
the physical life. As the architect without 
working with brick and mortar designs the 
plan of the house in his workroom in accord- 
ance with architectural and other rules, so 
has the architect of human creations, the spirit 
or Higher Self, to develop in the “Spirit- 
land” capacities and aims in accordance with 
the laws of this land, in order to bring them 
over into the physical world. Only if the 
human spirit sojourns over and over again in 
its own region will it be also able to bring the 
spirit, by means of the physical corporal 
instruments, into the earthly world. 

On the physical scene of action man learns 


144 THEOSOPHY 


to know the qualities and forces of the phys- 
ical world. He gathers there during his cre- 
ative activity experiences regarding the 
demands made by the physical world on any 
one wishing to work in it. He learns there to 
know, as it were, the qualities of the matter in 
which he wishes to embody his thoughts and 
ideas. The thoughts and ideas themselves he 
cannot extract from the matter, so that the 
physical world is both the scene of his creating 
and of his LEARNING. What has been learned 
is then transmuted in the “Spirit-land” into 
living faculties of the spirit. 

One can carry the above comparison fur- 
ther, in order to make the matter clearer. The 
architect designs the plan of the house. It 
is carried out. While this goes on he gains a 
number of the most varied experiences. All 
of these experiences enhance his capacities. 
When he designs his next plan all these experi- 
ences have an influence on it. And this plan, 
when compared to the first, is seen to be 
enriched with all that was learned through the 
first. It is the same with the successive human _ 
lives. In the interval between the incarna- 
tions the spirit lives in its own sphere. It 


THE THREE WORLDS 145 


can give itself up entirely to the requirements 
of the spirit life; freed from the physical cor- 
porality, it develops in every direction. And 
it calls to its aid in this development the fruits 
of its experiences in former earthly careers. 
In this way its attention is always directed to 
the scene of its earthly tasks. And in this way 
it works continually at making the earth, its 
present field of action, more and more per- 
fect. It works upon itself, so as to be able in 
each incarnation to carry out its service dur- 
ing its earthly pilgrimage more and more per- 
fectly. 

This is of course only a GENERAL OUTLINE 
of the successive human lives. The reality 
will never be quite the same, but will only 
more or less correspond with it. Circum- 
stances may bring it about that a subsequent 
life of a man is much less perfect than a pre- 
vious one. But taken as a whole such ir- 
regularities equalize themselves in a natural 
manner during the course of the succession of 
lives. 

The development of the spirit in “Spirit- 
land” takes place through the man’s throw- 
ing himself completely into the life of the 


146 THEOSOPHY 


different regions of this land. His own life, 
as it were, dissolves into each region succes- 
sively; he takes on, for the time being, their 
characteristics. Through this they penetrate 
his being with theirs, in order that his may be 
able to work, strengthened by theirs, in his 
earthly life. 

In the FIRST region of the “Spirit-land” man 
is surrounded with the spiritual Archetypes 
of the earthly things. During life on earth 
he learns to know only the shadows of these 
Archetypes which he grasps in his thoughts. 
What is merely THOUGHT on earth is in this 
region experienced, LIVED. Man moves among 
thoughts; but these thoughts are REAL BEINGS. 
What he has perceived with his senses during 
life on earth acts on him now in its thought 
form. But the thought does not appear as the 
shadow which hides itself behind the things; 
it is on the contrary the life-filled reality pro- 
ducing the things. Man is, as it were, in the 
thought workshop in which the earthly things 
are formed and constructed. For in the 
“and of Spirits” all is vital activity and 
mobility. Here, the thought world is at work 
as a world of living beings, creative and con- 


THE THREE WORLDS 147 


structive. One sees how that which one has 
experienced during the earthly existence is 
CONSTRUCTED. Just as in the physical body 
one experiences the things of the senses as 
reality, so now as spirit one experiences the 
spiritual constructive forces as real. Among 
the thought-beings to be found there is also 
the thought of one’s own physical corporality. 
One feels separated from this. One feels only 
the spiritual being as belonging to oneself. 
And when we no longer regard the body as 
physical but as thought-being, there already 
enters into our view of it its relation to the 
external world. We learn to look at it as 
something belonging to the external world, a 
member of this external world. We conse- 
quently no longer separate our OWN corpo- 
rality from the rest of the external world as 
something more nearly related to ourself. We 
feel the unity in the whole external world 
including our own bodily incarnations. Our 
own embodiments dissolve here into a unity 
with the rest of the world. Thus we here look 
upon the ARCHETYPES of the physical corpo- 
ral reality as a unity, to which we ourselves 
belong. We learn therefore gradually to 


148 THEOSOPHY 


know our relationship, our unity with the sur- 
rounding world by observation. We learn to 
say to it, ‘““That which is here spread out 
around thee, thou art that thyself.” And that 
is one of the fundamental thoughts in the 
ancient Indian Vedanta Wisdom. ‘The 
“sage” accustoms himself to do, even during 
his earth life, what others experience after 
death; namely, to grasp the thought that he 
himself is related to all things, the thought 
“Thou art that.” During the physical life 
this is an ideal to which the thought life can 
be devoted; in the “Land of Spirits” it is a 
plain fact, one which grows ever clearer to us 
through spiritual experience. And the man 
himself comes to know ever more and more 
clearly in this land that he in his own inner 
being belongs to the spirit world. He per- 
ceives himself to be a spirit among spirits, a 
member of the Primordial Spirit, and he will 
feel concerning himself, “I am the Primal 
Spirit.’ (The Wisdom of the Vedanta says 
“T am Brahman,” i.e., I belong as a member to 
the Primordial Being, in Whom all beings . 
have their origin.) One sees that what is 
grasped during earthly life as a shadowy 


THE THREE WORLDS 149 


thought and toward which all wisdom strives, 
is in the “Spirit-land” an immediate experi- 
ence. Indeed, it is only THOUGHT during the 
earth life because it is a FACT in the spiritual 
existence. 

Thus man during his spiritual existence sees 
the relationships and facts in the midst of 
which he stands during his earthly career 
from a high watch tower, as if from outside. 
And during his life in the lowest regions of 
“Spirit-land” he has this attitude toward the 
earthly relationships immediately connected 
with the physical corporal reality. On earth 
man is born into a family, a race; he lives in 
a certain country. His earthly existence is 
determined by all these relationships. He 
finds this or that friend because relationships 
in the physical world bring it about. He car- 
ries on this or that business. All this decides 
the conditions of his earthly life. All this 
presents itself to him during his life in the 
first region of “Spirit-land” as LIVING thought 
being. He lives it all through again in a 
certain way. But he lives it through from the 
active spiritual side. The family love he has 
extended, the friendship he has offered, are 


150 THEOSOPHY 


made living from within, made to spring from 
inner sources, and his capacities in this direc- 
tion are enhanced. The force in the spirit of 
man which acts as the power of love of fam- 
ily and friend is strengthened. He enters his 
earthly existence later a more perfect man in 
these respects. It is to a certain extent the 
everyday relationships of the earth life which 
ripen as the fruitage of this lowest region of 
the “Spirit-land.” And those personswhose 
interests are wholly absorbed by these every- 
day relationships will feel themselves in affin- 
ity with this region for the greater part of 
their spiritual life between two incarnations. 

The next region is that in which the COM- 
MON LIFE of the earth world flows as Thought- 
being, as the fluid element, so to speak, of the 
“Spirit-land.” So long as we observe the 
world during physical embodiment life 
appears to us to be confined within separate 
LIVING BEINGS. In “Spirit-land” it is loosed 
from them and, like life blood, flows as it were 
through the whole land. It is there the living 
Unity which is present in everything. Of this 
also only a reflection appears to us during the 
earthly life. And this reflection expresses 


THE THREE WORLDS 151 


itself in every form of reverence we pay to the 
Whole, to the Unity and Harmony of the uni- 
verse. The religious life of man is derived 
from this reflection. Man becomes_sensible 
of the fact that the significance of existence 
does not lie in what is transitory and separate. 
He regards the transitory as a “similitude,” 
a likeness of an Eternal, of a harmonious 
Unity. He looks up to this Unity in rever- 
ence and worship. He offers up before it 
religious rites and ceremonies. In “Spirit- 
land” appears, not the reflection, but the real 
form, as living Thought-being. Here man 
can really unite himself with the Unity that 
he has reverenced on earth. The fruitage of 
the religious life and all connected with it 
appears in this region. Man now learns 
through spiritual experience to recognize that 
his individual fate is not to be separated from 
the community to which he belongs. The 
capacity to know oneself as a member of a 
whole develops itself here. Religious natures, 
and such as have already during life striven 
after a pure and noble morality, will draw 
strength out of this region during a great part 
of their spiritual life between incarnations. 


152 THEOSOPHY 


And they will reincarnate with heightened 
capacities in this direction. 

The THIRD region of “Spirit-land” contains 
the Archetypes of the soul world. All that 
lives in this world is present as living thought- 
being. One finds in it the Archetypes.f 
desires, wishes, feelings, etc. But here, in the 
spirit world, nothing of self-seeking attaches 
itself to the soul. Like all life in the second 
region, in this third region all longings, 
wishes, all likes and dislikes, form a unity. 
The desires and wishes of others are not separ- 
able from my desires and wishes. The sensa- 
tions and feelings of all beings are a common 
world enclosing and surrounding everything 
else, just as our physical atmosphere surrounds 
the earth. This region is, as it were, the atmos- 
phere or air of the “Spirit-land.” All that a 
person has carried out in his life on earth in 
the service of the community, in selfless devo- 
tion to his fellowmen, will bear fruit here. 
For through this service, through this self- 
giving, he has lived in a reflection of the third 
region of the “Spirit-land.” The great bene- 
factors of the human race, the philanthropists 
who render great services to communities, 


THE THREE WORLDS 153 


have gained their ability to render them in 
this region, after having made themselves 
worthy of a special relationship with it during 
their previous earthly careers. 

It is evident that the three regions of “Spirit- 
land” above described have a certain connec- 
tion with those below them, the physical and 
the soul worlds. For they contain the Arche- 
types, the living Thought-beings that take up 
their corporal and soul existence in these 
worlds. Only the FOURTH region is the “pure 
Spirit-land.” “But even it is not that in the~ 
fullest sense of the word. It differs from the 
three lower regions owing to the fact that in 
them we meet with the Archetypes of those 
physical and soul relations which man finds 
existing in the physical and soul worlds before 
he himself begins to take any part in them. 
The circumstances of the ordinary everyday 
life link themselves with things and beings 
which man finds already present in the world: 
the transitory things of THIS WORLD direct his 
gaze to their eternal primal foundation; nor 
do the fellow creatures of man to whom he 
selflessly devotes himself owe their existence 
to him. But it is through him that there are 


154 THEOSOPHY 


in the world all the creations of the arts, 
sciences, engineering, states, governments, etc. ; 
in short all that he has embodied in the world 
as original works of his spirit. Without his 
cooperation none of the physical reproductions 
of all these would be in the world. The Arche- 
types of these purely human creations are in 
the fourth region of the “Spirit-land.” What 
man during the earthly life develops in. the 
way of scientific discoveries, of artistic ideas 
and forms, of technical conceptions, bears 
fruit in this fourth region. It is out of this 
region, therefore, that artists, scientists, great 
inventors, draw nourishment during their stay 
in “Spirit-land” and increase their genius, in 
order, during another incarnation, to be able 
to assist with greater weight the further evolu- 
tion.of human progress...._It has been said above 
that even this region cannot be called the “pure 
Spirit-land” in the FULL sense of the word. 
This is because the stage at which men have 
left civilization on earth continues to influ- 
ence their spiritual existence. They can 
enjoy in “Spirit-land” only the fruits of that 
which it was possible for them to carry out in 
accordance with their gifts and the stage of 


THE THREE WORLDS 155 


development of the race, state, etc., into which 
they were born. 

In the still higher regions of the “Spirit- 
land” the human spirit is freed from every 
earthly fetter. It rises to the “pure Spirit- 
land” in which it experiences the intentions, 
the aims, which the spirit set itself to accom- 
plish by means of the earthly life. All that 
has been realized in the world brings into 
earthly existence only a more or less weak copy 
of the highest intentions and aims. Each 
crystal, each tree, each animal, and all that is 
being realized in the domain of human crea- 
tions, all this only gives of that which the 
spirit intends. And man, during his incarna- 
tions, can only set to work with these imper- 
fect copies of the perfect intentions and aims. 
Thus during one of his incarnations he him- 
self can only be a copy of that which, in the 
kingdom of the spirit, he is intended to be. 
What he as spirit in “Spirit-land” really is 
comes therefore into view only when he rises 
in the interval between two incarnations, 
to the fifth region of “Spirit-land.” What 
he is here is really he himself, that which 
receives an external existence in the numerous 


156 THEOSOPHY 


and varied incarnations. In this region 
the true Self of man can freely live its true 
life and expand in all directions. And this 
Self is that which appears ever anew in 
each incarnation as the one. This Self 
brings with it the faculties which have devel- 
oped in the lower regions of the “Spirit-land.” 
It carries, consequently, the fruits of former 
lives over into those following. It is the bearer 
of the results of former incarnations. There- 
fore one can call it the ‘‘BEARER OF CAUSES.” 
(In theosophical literature it is for this rea- 
son called the “Causal Body.’’) 

When the Self lives in the FIFTH region 
of the “Spirit-land” it is accordingly in the 
kingdom of intentions and aims. As the arch- 
itect learns from the imperfections which 
show themselves in his work, and as he only 
brings into his new plans what he was able 
to change from imperfections to perfections, 
so the Self, in the fifth region, shakes off the 
results of its experiences in former lives 
related to the imperfections of the lower 
worlds, and fructifies the purposes of . 
the “Spirit-land’—purposes with which it 
now lives—with the perfect results of its 


THE THREE WORLDS 157 


former lives. It is clear that the force which 
can be drawn from this region will depend 
upon how much the Self, during its incarna- 
tion, has acquired in the form of results suited 
to being received into the world of Purposes. 
The self that has sought to realize the purposes 
of the spirit during the earthly life through 
an active thought life or through wise love 
expressed in deeds, will establish a strong 
claim to this region. The self that has 
expended itself entirely on the events of the 
everyday life, that has lived only in the transi- 
tory, has sown no seeds that can play a part in 
the purposes of the eternal World Order. 
Only that small portion of the activities of 
the self which had extended beyond the inter- 
ests of everyday life can unfold as fruitage 
in this higher region of the “Spirit-land.” In 
general it will hold good that a man’s affinity 
with this region will be the greater the more 
developed he is. Since a man in this region 
lives in his own true Self, he is raised above 
everything that, as a part of the lower worlds, 
envelops him during his incarnations. He is 
what he ever was and ever will be during the 
course of his incarnations. He lives in the 


158 THEOSOPHY 


governing power of the Purposes which pre- 
vail during these incarnations, and which he 
grafts into his own Self. He looks back on 
his own past, and feels that all that he has 
experienced in it will be brought into service 
in the purposes he has to bring to realization 
in the future. A kind of remembrance of his 
earlier lives and the prophetic vision of his 
future ones flash forth. We see, therefore, that 
what in this book (pp. 46 et seq.) is called 
“spirit self” lives in this region, as far as it is 
developed, in that measure of reality with 
which it is able to unite itself; it develops itself 
still further and prepares itself to make pos- 
sible in a new incarnation the fulfillment of 
the spiritual purposes in the region of earthly 
reality. 

If this “spirit self” has evolved so far during 
a succession of sojourns in “‘Spirit-land” that he 
can move about quite freely in this land, he 
will evermore seek his true home in it. Life 
in the spirit will be as familiar to him as life 
in the physical reality is to the earthly man. 
The viewpoints of the spirit world can from . 
now on be the only ones which he makes his 
own during his succeeding earth lives. Such 


THE THREE WORLDS 159 


a Self feels himself uninterruptedly to be a 
member of the divine World Order. The 
limitations and laws of the earthly life affect 
him in his innermost being no more. Power 
for all that he carries out comes to him from 
this spiritual world. But the spiritual world 
isa Unity. He who lives in it knows how the 
Eternal has produced the past, and he can, 
from out the Eternal, discern which direction 
the future is to take. The view over the past 
widens into a perfect one. A man who has 
reached this stage sets before himself the aims 
which he should carry out in the approaching 
incarnation. From out the “Spirit-land” he 
influences his future so that it runs its course 
in harmony with the true and the spiritual. 
Such a man during the stages between two 
incarnations is in the presence of all those 
exalted Beings before whose gaze the Divine 
Wisdom lies spread out unveiled. For he has 
climbed up to the stage at which he can under- 
stand them. And, should he return to the 
earth, he acts in harmony with them. His 
word is itself a reflection of divine revelation 
and his deed a link in the divine World Order. 

Only he who during an earth life has freed 


160 THEOSOPHY 


himself to a high degree from the transient 
trifles and the worthless turmoil of existence 
can hope that he shall rise in ““Spirit-land” into 
the SIXTH region, through which he shall 
receive a “DIVINE MISSION” for a coming earth 
life. Through this divine mission he becomes 
‘‘a stranger on this earth” only in so far as he 
himself in his innermost being is not moved 
by inclinations and disinclinations springing 
from the transitory nature of things, but allows 
himself to be guided by what the spirit recog- 
nizes as necessary. Because he does this, he 
will accomplish through all his actions that 
which is most in conformity with the TRUE 
BEING OF THE UNIVERSE. For he has reached 
the point of seeking not that which will be of 
use to him but only and entirely that which 
ought to take place; that which is in accord- 
ance with the true progress of the World 
Order. His interest in the world, his devo- 
tion to it, are the greater the less he himself 
is attached through his sympathies and antipa- 
thies to transient matters. His understand- 
ing of all that goes on around him will be. 
great because his soul observes all without 
desires and in quiet composedness. 


THE THREE WORLDS 161 


The SEVENTH region of the “Spirit-land” 
brings one e to the confines of the “three worlds.” 
The man who can feel himself attracted to it 
stands here in the presence of the “Life ker- 
nels” which are transplanted from the higher 
worlds into the three which have been 
described, in order that in them they may ful- 
fill their missions. When a man therefore is 
on the confines of the three worlds he recog- 
nizes himselfin his own Life kernel. This 
implies that for him the problems of these 
three worlds have been solved. He has acom- 
plete view of the entire life of these worlds. 
He has solved the great “Why” of existence. 
(The great guides of the human race who will 
be spoken of in the chapter on “The Path of 
Knowledge” are recognized by means of 
forces originating in this region of the “Spirit- 
land.’’) 


5. THE PHYSICAL WORLD AND ITS 
CONNECTION WITH THE SOUL 
AND SPIRIT LANDS 


The formations of the Soul World and the 
“Spirit-land” cannot be the objects of external 
sense perception. The objects of THIS per- 


162 THEOSOPHY 


ception are to be added to the two already 
described as a third world. Man lives-during 
his bodily existence simultaneously in the three 
worlds... He perceives the things of the sen- 
sible world and acts upon them. ‘The forma- 
tions of the soul world act on him through their 
forces of sympathy and antipathy; and his own — 
soul excites waves in the soul world by its 
inclinations and disinclinations, its wishes and 
desires. The spiritual being of things, on the 
other hand, mirrors itself in his thought world 
and he himself is, as thinking spirit being, 
citizen of the “Spirit-land” and participant of 
all that lives in this region of the universe. 
This makes it clear that the sensible world 
is only a part of that which surrounds man. 
This part stands out from the general sur- 
roundings of man with a certain independ- 
ence because it can be perceived by senses 
which leave disregarded the soul and spiritual 
parts which belong just as much to the sur- 
rounding world. Even as a piece of ice float- 
ing on the water is of the same matter as the 
surrounding water but stands out from it owing. 
to particular qualities, so are the things of the 
senses matter of the surrounding soul and spirit 


THE THREE WORLDS 163 


worlds; and they stand out from these owing 
to particular qualities which make them per- 
ceptible to the senses. They are, to speak half 
metaphorically, condensed spirit and soul for- 
mations; and the condensation makes it possi- 
ble for the senses to acquire knowledge of them. 
In fact, as ice is only a form in which the 
water exists, so are the objects of the senses 
only a form in which soul and spirit beings 
exist. If one has grasped this, one can also 
understand that as water can pass over into ice, 
so the spirit world can pass over into the soul 
world, and the latter into that of the senses. 
Looking at the matter from this point of view 
leads us to the reason why man can form 
thoughts about the things of the senses. For 
there is a question which everyone who thinks 
would have to ask himself, namely, in what 
relation does the thought which a man has 
about a stone stand to the stone itself? This 
question rises in full clearness in the minds of 
those persons who look especially deeply into 
external nature. They feel the consonance of 
the human thought world with the structure 
and order of nature. The great astronomer 
Kepler, for example, speaks in a beautiful 


164 THEOSOPHY 


way about this harmony, “True it is that the 
divine call which bids man study astronomy 
is written in the world, not indeed in words 
and syllables, but in the very fact that human 
conceptions and senses are fitted to gauge the 
relationships of the heavenly bodies and their 
conditions.” Only because the things of the 
sensible world are nothing else than condensed 
spirit beings is the man who raises himself 
through his thought to these spirit beings able 
by thinking to understand the things. Sense 
objects originate in the spirit world; they are 
only another FORM of the spirit beings. And 
when man forms thoughts about things he 
merely looks up from the sensible form to the 
spiritual Archetypes of the things. To under- 
stand an object by means of thought is a proc- 
ess which can be likened to that by which a 
solid body is first liquefied by fire in order that 
the chemist may be able to examine it in its 
liquid form. 

The spiritual Archetypes of the sensible 
world are to be found (pp. 131 et seq.) in the 
different regions of the “‘Spirit-land.” In the - 
fifth, sixth, and seventh regions these Arche- 
types remain in the condition of living Germ 


THE THREE WORLDS 165 


points; in the four lower regions they shape 
themselves into spiritual formations. The 
human spirit perceives a shadowy reflection of 
these spiritual formations when, by thinking, 
he tries to gain understanding of the things 
of the senses. How these formations have con- 
densed until they form the sensible world is 
a question for him who strives toward a spirit- 
ual undertsanding of the world around him. 
For human sense perception this surrounding 
world is divided into four distinctly sepa- 
rated stages, the mineral, the plant, the ani- 
mal, and the human. 

The mineral kingdom is perceived by the 
senses and comprehended by thought. Thus 
when one forms a thought about a mineral 
body one has to do with two things, the sense 
object and the thought. In accordance with 
this, one is brought to the conception that this 
sense object is a condensed thought being. 
Now one mineral being acts on another in an 
external way. It impinges on it and moves it; 
it warms it, lights it up, dissolves it, etc. This 
external kind of action can be expressed 
through thoughts. A man forms thoughts as 
to the way in which mineral things act on each 


166 THEOSOPHY 


other externally and in accordance with their 
laws. By this means his separate thoughts 
expand to a thought picture of the whole min- 
eral world. And this thought picture is a 
gleam, a reflection of the Archetype of the 
whole mineral world of the senses. It is to be 
found AS A COMPLETE WHOLE in the spirit 
world. 

In the plant kingdom there is added to the 
external action of one thing on another, the 
phenomena of growth and propagation. The 
plant grows and brings forth from itself beings 
like itself. LIFE is here added to what man 
meets with in the mineral kingdom. A sim- 
ple recollection of this fact leads to an expres- 
sion which is enlightening in this connection. 
The plant has in itself the power to give itself 
its LIVING shape, and to reproduce this shape 
in a being of its own kind. And in between 
the shapeless kinds of mineral matter, as we 
meet them in gases, liquids, etc., and the living 
shape of the plant world, stand the forms of 
the crystal. In the crystal we have the transi- 
tion from the shapeless mineral world to the . 
plant kingdom, which has the capacity for 
forming living shapes. In this externally 


THE THREE WORLDS 167 


sensible formative process in both kingdoms, 
the mineral and the plant, one sees condensed 
to its sensible expression the purely spiritual 
process which takes place when the spiritual 
Germs of the higher regions of the “Spirit- 
land” form themselves into the spirit shapes 
of the lower regions. The process of crystal- 
lization corresponds to its Archetype in the 
spirit world, the transition from the formless 
spirit Germ to the SHAPED FORMATION. If 
this transition condenses so that the senses can 
perceive it, it exhibits itself in the world of 
the senses as the process of crystallization. 
Now there is in the plant being a shaped 
spirit Germ also. But here the living, shap- 
ing capacity is still retained in the shaped 
being. In the crystal the spirit Germ has lost 
its constructing power during the process of 
shaping. It has exhausted its energies in the 
shape produced. ‘The plant has shape and, in 
addition to that, it has the capacity of produc- 
ing a shape. The characteristic of the spirit 
Germs in the higher regions of the “Spirit- 
land” has been preserved in the plant life. 
The plant is therefore shape, as is the crystal, 
and, added to that, shaping or formative force. 


168 THEOSOPHY 


Besides the form which the Primal Beings 
have taken in the plant shape there works at 
the latter yet another form which bears the 
impress of the spirit being of the higher 
regions. Only that which expends itself on 
the produced shape of the plant is sensibly per- 
ceptible; the formative Beings who give life 
to this shape are present in the plant kingdom 
in a way not perceptible to the senses. The 
physical eye sees the lily small to-day, and 
after some time grown larger. The forming 
force which elaborates the latter out of the 
former cannot be seen by this eye. This form- 
ative Force Being is that part of the plant 
world which acts imperceptibly to the senses. 
The spirit Germs have descended a stage in 
order to work in the kingdom of shapes. In 
Theosophy, Elementary Kingdoms are spoken 
of. Ifone designate the Primal Forms, which 
as yet have no shape, as the FIRST ELEMEN- 
TARY KINGDOM, then the sensibly invisible 
Force Beings, who work as the craftsmen of 
plant growth, belong to the SECOND ELEMEN- 
TARY KINGDOM. 

In the animal world sensation and impulse 
are added to the capacities for growth and 


THE THREE WORLDS 169 


propagation. These are externalizations of 
the SOUL WORLD. A being endowed with 
these belongs to the soul world, receives 
impressions from it and reacts on it. Every 
sensation, every impulse, which arises in an 
animal is brought forth from the foundations 
of the animal soul. The shape is more endur- 
ing than the feeling or impulse. One may say 
the sensation life bears the same relation to the 
more enduring living shape that the self-chang- 
ing plant shape bears to the rigid crystal. The 
plant to a certain extent exhausts itself as the 
shape-forming force; during its life it goes on 
constantly adding new shapes to itself. First 
it sends out the root, then the leaf structure, 
then the flowers, etc. The animal possesses a 
shape complete in itself and develops within 
this the ever-changing life of feeling and 
impulses. And this life has its existence in 
the soul world. Just as the plant is that which 
grows and propagates itself, the animal is that 
which feels and develops its impulses. They 
constitute for the animal the formless which 
is always developing into new forms. Their 
Archetypal processes when traced to their pri- 
mal source are found in the highest regions of 


170 THEOSOPHY 


“Spirit-land.” But they carry out their activ- 
ities in the soul world. There are thus in the 
animal world, in addition to the Force Beings 
who, invisible to the senses, direct growth and 
propagation, others that have descended into 
the soul world, a stage still deeper. In the 
animal kingdom formless Beings, who clothe 
themselves in soul sheaths, are present as the 
master builders, bringing about sensations and 
impulses. They are the real architects of the 
animal forms. In theosophy one calls the 
region to which they belong the THIRD ELE- 
MENTARY KINGDOM. 

Man, in addition to having the capacities 
named as those of plants and animals, is fur- 
nished also with the power of working up his 
sensations into ideas and thoughts and of con- 
trolling his impulses by thinking. The 
thought which appears in the plant as shape 
and in the animal as soul force makes its 
appearance in him in its own form as thought 
itself. The animal is soul; man is spirit. The 
Spirit Being, which in the animal is engaged 
in soul development, has now descended a 
stage deeper still. In man it has entered into 
the world of sensible matter itself. The spirit 


THE THREE WORLDS 171 


is present within the human sensible body. 
And because it appears in a sensible garment, 
it can appear only as that shadowy gleam 
or reflection which the thought of the Spirit 
Being affords. The spirit manifests in man 
through the apparatus of the physical brain 
mechanism. But at the same time it has 
become the inner being of man. The animal 
feels and moves as it chooses, but exhibits no 
thoughts. Thought is the form which the 
formless Spirit Being assumes in man just as 
it is shape in the plant and soul in the animal. 
Consequently man, in so far as he is a think- 
ing being, has no Elementary Kingdom con- 
structing him from without. His Elementary 
Kingdom works in his physical body. Only 
in so far as man is shape and sentient being, 
do Elementary Beings work at him in the same 
way as they work at plants and animals. The 
thought organism of man is developed entirely 
from within his physical body. In the spirit 
organism of man, in his nervous system which 
has developed into the perfect brain, we have 
sensibly visible before us that which works on 
plants and animals as supersensible Force 
Being. This brings about the fact that the 


172 THEOSOPHY 


animal shows feeling of self, but man con- 
sciousness of self. In the animal, spirit feels 
itself to be soul; it does not yet comprehend 
itself as spirit. In man the spirit recognizes 
itself as spirit, although, owing to the physical 
apparatus, merely as a shadowy gleam or 
reflection of the spirit, as thought. 
Accordingly, the threefold world. falls into 
the following divisions: 1. The Kingdom of 
the Archetypal formless Beings (First Ele- 
mentary Kingdom) ; 2. The Kingdom of the 
Shape-creating Beings (Second Elementary 
Kingdom); 3. The Kingdom of the Soul 
Beings (Third Elementary Kingdom) ; 4. The 
Kingdom of the Created Shapes (crystal 
forms); 5. The Kingdom that becomes per- 
ceptible to the senses in shapes, but in which 
the Shape-creating Beings are working (Plant 
Kingdom) ; 6. The Kingdom which becomes 
sensibly perceptible in shapes, on which work 
the Shape-creating Beings, and also the Beings 
that expend all their activities in the soul life 
(Animal Kingdom) ; 7. The Kingdom which 
becomes sensibly perceptible in shapes on 
which work the Shape-creating Beings and 
also the Beings that expend all their activities 


THE THREE WORLDS 173 


in soul life, and in which the spirit itself takes 
shape in the form of thought within the world 
of the senses (Human Kingdom). 

From this can be seen how the basic constit- 
uents of the human being living in the body 
are connected with the spiritual world. The 
physical body, the ether body, the sentient soul 
body, and the intellectual soul, are to be 
regarded as Archetypes of the “Spirit-land” 
condensed in the sensible world. The phys- 
ical body comes into existence in that the 
Archetype of man is so condensed that it can 
manifest itself to the senses. For this reason 
one can call this physical body also a Being of 
the First Elementary Kingdom, condensed to 
sensible perceptibility. "The ether-body comes 
into existence in that the shape that has arisen 
in this way has its mobility retained by a Being 
that extends its activity into the kingdom of 
the senses but is not itself visible to the senses. 
If one wishes to characterize this Being fully, 
one must say it has its primal origin in the 
highest regions of the “Spirit-land” and then 
shapes itself in the second region into an Arche- 
type of life. It works in the sensible world 
as such an Archetype of life. In a similar 


174 THEOSOPHY 


way the Being that constructs the sentient soul- 
body has its origin in the highest regions of 
the “Spirit-land,” forms itself in the third 
region of the same into the Archetype of the 
soul world and works as such in the sensible 
world. But the intellectual soul is formed in 
that the Archetype of thinking man shapes 
itself in the fourth region of the “Spirit-land” 
into thought, and as such acts directly as think- 
ing human being in the world of the senses. 
Thus man stands within the world of the 
senses; thus works the spirit on his physical- 
body, on his ether-body, and on his sentient 
soul-body. Thus comes this spirit into mani- 
festation in the intellectual soul. Archetypes 
in the form of Beings who in a certain sense 
are external to man work upon the three lower 
components of his being; in his intellectual 
soul he himself becomes a (conscious) worker 
on himself. The Beings working on his phys- 
ical-body are the same as those who form the 
mineral nature. On his ether-body work 
Beings living in the plant kingdom, on his _ 
sentient soul-body work Beings who live in 
the animal kingdom imperceptible by the 


THE THREE WORLDS 175 


senses, but who extend their activity into these 
kingdoms. 

Thus do the different worlds combine in 
action. The universe in which man lives is 
the expression of this combined activity. 

When a person has thoroughly grasped this 
view of the sensible world he gains also an 
understanding of Beings of another kind than 
those that have their existence in the above 
mentioned four kingdoms of nature. One 
example of such Beings is what one calls the 
Folk Spirit, or National Spirit. This Being 
does not manifest himself directly in a sensi- 
bly perceptible way. He lives and carries on 
his activities entirely in the sensations, feel- 
ings, tendencies, etc., which one observes as 
those common to a whole nation. He is there- 
fore a Being that does not incarnate physically, 
but forms his body out of the matter of the 
soul world, even as man forms his body out of 
sensibly visible matter. This soul body of the 
National Spirit is like a cloud in which the 
members of a nation live. The effects of his 
activity come into evidence in the souls of the 
human beings concerned, but he does not orig- 
inate in these souls themselves. The National 


176 THEOSOPHY 


Spirit remains merely a shadowy conception 
of the mind without being or life, an empty 
abstraction, to him who does not picture it in 
this way. And the same may be said in refer- 
ence to what one calls the Spirit of the Age 
(Zeitgeist). The spiritual outlook, in fact, 
is through this, extended over a variety of 
other beings, both lower and higher, who live 
in the environment of man without his being 
able to perceive them with his bodily senses. 
But those who have powers of spiritual sight 
perceive such beings and can describe them. 
To the lower kinds belong those designated 
by the spiritual investigator, as salamanders, 
sylphs, undines, and gnomes. It is quite to be 
understood that anyone who is inclined to 
admit the validity of physical vision only, 
regards such beings as the offspring of a wild 
hallucination and superstition. They can of 
course never become visible to the physical eye 
for they have no physical bodies. ‘The super- 
stition does not consist in regarding such beings 
as real, but in believing that they appear in a 
way perceptible to the physical senses. Beings. 
with such forms codperate in the building of 
the world, and one comes into connection with 


THE THREE WORLDS 177 


them as soon as one enters the higher regions 
closed to the bodily senses. Mention must 
also be made of those beings who do not 
descend to the soul world, but whose vestment 
is composed of the formations of the “Spirit- 
land” alone. Man perceives them and 
becomes their companion when he opens his 
spiritual eye and spiritual eartothem. Many 
things at which without these organs man can 
only gaze uncomprehendingly, become, when 
he has brought them into use, understandable 
to him. It becomes bright around him, he 
sees the Primal Causes of that which is work- 
ing itself out as effects in the world of the 
senses. He comprehends what he either 
denied entirely when he had no spiritual eye, 
or in reference to which he had to content 
himself with saying, “There are more things 
in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in thy 
philosophy.” People with fine—with spirit- 
ual—feelings become uneasy when they begin 
to have a glimmering, become vaguely aware 
of another world than the sensible one around 
them, and one within which they have 
to grope about as the blind grope among 
visible objects. Nothing but the clear 


178 THEOSOPHY 


vision of these higher regions of existence and 
a thorough understanding and penetration of 
what takes place in them can really fortify a 
man and lead him to his proper goal. Only 
through insight into that which is hidden from 
the senses does the human being understand 
the world and himself. 


6. THOUGHT-FORMS AND THE HUMAN 
AURA 


It has become evident that the formations of 
any one of the three worlds can have reality 
for a man only when he has the capacities or 
the organs for perceiving them. A man per- 
ceives certain occurrences in space as light 
phenomena only because he has a correctly- 
constructed eye. It depends on the receptivity 
of a being how much of what really is, reveals 
itself to it. Never therefore may a man say 
that only what he can perceive is real. There 
can be much that is real, for the perception of 
which he has no organs. Now the soul world 
and the spirit world are just as real as the sen- 
sible world, indeed they are real in a much 
higher sense. No physical eye can see feel- 
ings and ideas; but they are real. And as man 


THE THREE WORLDS 179 


by means of his outer senses has the corporal 
world before him as an object of perception, 
so do feelings, impulses, instincts, thoughts, 
etc., become objects of perception for his spir- 
itual senses. Exactly as occurrences in space 
can be seen with the sensible eye as color phe- 
nomena, the above-named soul and spiritual 
occurrences can become, by means of the inner 
senses, perceptions which are analogous to the 
sensible color phenomena. To understand 
perfectly in what way this is meant is only 
possible for one who has trod the path of 
knowledge described in the following chapter 
and has thereby developed his inner senses. 
For such a one the soul phenomena in the 
soul region around him and the spiritual phe- 
nomena in the spiritual region become super- 
sensibly visible. For him, feelings ray out 
from the feeling being as light phenomena; 
thoughts surge through the spiritual space. 
_ For him, the thought of one man about another 
is not something imperceptible but a percep- 
tible occurrence. The thought streams out as 
an actual reality from one human being and 
flows to the other. And the way in which 
this thought acts on the other person becomes 


180 THEOSOPHY 


similarly a perceptible occurrence in the spir- 
itual world. Thus the physically perceptible 
human being is only part of the whole man 
for him whose spiritual senses are unfolded. 
This physical man becomes the center of soul 
and spiritual outpourings. It is impossible to 
do more than faintly indicate the richly varied 
world which discloses itself here to the seer. 
A human thought, for example, appears as a 
spiritually perceptible color phenomenon. Its 
color corresponds with the character of the 
thought. A thought which springs forth from 
a sensual impulse in a person has a different 
color from a thought conceived in the service 
of pure knowledge, noble beauty, or the eternal 
good. ‘Thoughts-which-spring.from.-the-sen- 
sual life course through the soul world in red 
shades of color. A thought by which the 
thinker rises to higher knowledge appears in 
beautiful light yellow. A thought which 
springs from devoted and unselfish love rays” 
out in glorious rose pink. And just as the | 
content of a thought comes into expression in 
its supersensibly visible form, so also does the - 
greater or less degree of its definiteness. The 
precise thought of the thinker shows itself as 


THE THREE WORLDS 181 


a formation with definite outlines; the con- 
fused idea appears as a wavering, cloudy 
formation. 

In this way the soul and spirit being of man 
appears as the supersensible part of the WHOLE 
human being. 

The color effects which the “spiritual eye” 
can perceive raying out round the physical 
man and enveloping him like a cloud (some- 
what egg-shaped) are called the HUMAN aura. 
The size of this aura differs in different peo- 
ple. But one can form an idea of it by pic- 
turing that the WHOLE man is in the average 
twice as long and four times as broad as the 
physical man. 

The most varied tones of colors surge in the 
aura. And this surging is a true picture of 
the inner life of the man. Single color-tones 
are just as changing. But certain permanent 
qualities, such as talents, habits, traits of char- 
acter, express themselves in a foundation of 

| permanent color-tones. 

‘ The aura varies greatly according to the 
different temperaments and dispositions of 
people; it varies also in accordance with the 
stages of spiritual development. A man who 


182 THEOSOPHY 


yields completely to his animal impulses has 
an entirely different aura from one who lives 
much in the world of thought. The aura of 
a nature with a religious tone differs essen- 
tially from one that expends itself on the trivial 
experiences of the day. In addition to this, 
all varying moods, all inclinations, joys and 
pains, find their expression in the aura. 

ne has to compare the auras of different 
human types with each other in order to learn 
to understand the meaning of the color-tones. 
Take, to begin with, people who have strongly 
marked passions. They may be divided into 
two kinds; those who are impelled to these 
feelings by the animal nature chiefly, and 
those with whom these passions take a more 
subtle form in which they are, so to speak, 
strongly influenced by thought. In the first 
kind of person brown and brown-red streams 
of color in every shade surge through the aura 
in definite places. ‘In persons with more sub- | 
tle passions there appear in the same places | 
tones of brighter red and green. One can } 
notice that as intelligence increases the green | 
tones become more and more abundant, Per- 


ons who are very_intelligent,but who quite 





THE THREE WORLDS 183 


give themselves over to the satisfying of their 
animal impulses, have much green in their 
aura. But this green will always have more 
or less of an admixture of brown or brownish 
red. Unintélligent people show a great part 
of their aura coursed through by brownish red 
or even by dark blood-red streams. 

The auras of quiet, deliberate, thoughtful! 
people are essentially different those of 
such passionate natures. The brownis id 
feddish tones become less prominent, and dif- 

ent shades of green. come out. With 
thoughtful natures the aura shows a pleasing 
green undertone. This is to an especial degree 
the appearance of those natures of whom one 
can say, “They know how to adapt themselves 


to every condition of life.” 

oN of color appear in natures full of 
devotion) The more a man places his Self 
in the service of a thing the more pronounced 
become the blue shades. In this class, also, 
one finds two-quite different kinds of people. 
There are natures with a mediocre power of 
thought, passive souls who, as it were, have 
nothing to throw into the stream of events in 
the world but their “good nature.” Their aura 

Te emai 





184 THEOSOPHY 


glimmers with (heantiéul blige SG observes 


the same in the auras of religious and-deve— 
tional S. Compassionate souls and 
eae hd pleasure in giving themselves 
up to a life of benevolence have similar auras. 
If such people are intelligent in -gddition 
this, green and blue currents alternate, or the 
blue itself perhaps take a greenish shade. It 
is the peculiarity of the active souls in contrast 
to the passive, that their blue saturates itself 
from within with bright cofor-tones. Richly 
inventive natures, such as have fruitful 
thoughts, ray out bright tones of color as if 
from an inner-peint. This is the case in the 
Bienest geass with those persons whom one 
calls “wise,” and especially with those full of 
fruitful ideas. Generally speaking, all that 
implies spiritual activity takes more the form 
of rays which spread out from within, while 
everything that arises from the animal life has 
the form of irregular clouds which surge 
through the diska icone ia aldo 
Auric formations show colorings which dif- 
fer according to whether the conceptions 
which spring up in an active soul are placed 
at the service of the person’s own animal 





one 


THE THREE WORLDS 185 


impulses or of an idealistic interest outside of 
himself. The inventive person who applies 
all his thoughts to the satisfaction of his sen- 
sual passions shows dark, blue-red shades; he, 
on the contrary, who places his thoughts self- 
lessly at the service of an interest outside of 
himself, shows light reddish-blue color-tones. 
AX spiritual life combined with noble devotion 
and capacity for sacrifice shows rose_pink or 
light violet colors. 

Not only does the fundamental disposition of 
the soul show its color surgings in the aura but 
also transient passions, moods, and other inner 
experiences. An anger that breaks out sud- 
denly creates red streams. Feelings of injured 
dignity which expend themselves in a sudden 
welling up can be seen appearing in dark green 
clouds. Color phenomena, however, do not 
appear only in iregular cloud forms but also in 
distinctly defined, regularly shaped figures. A 


fit of terror, for example, shows the aura 
_lined from top to bottom by undulating stripes 
of blue-eelor suffused with a reddish shimmer. 
In a person who expects with anxiety some 
particular event, one can see continuous red- 


186 THEOSOPHY 


blue stripes like rays streaming from within 
the aura to the circumference. 

Every sensation which a man receives from 
without can be observed by one who has devel- 
oped a faculty of exact spiritual perception. 
Persons who are greatly excited by every 
external impression show a continuous flick- 
ering of small reddish spots and flecks in the 
aura. In people who do not feel intensely, 
these flecks have an orange yellow or even a 
beautiful yellow coloring. So called “absent- 
minded” people show bluish flecks more or less 
changing in form. 

A highly developed spiritual seer can dis- 
tinguish three species of color phenomena 
within the aura, radiating and surging round 
aman. First there are the colors which bear 
more or less the character of opaqueness and 
dullness, although if we compare them with 
those that our physical eyes see, they appear 
in comparison fugitive and transparent. But 
within the supersensible world itself they 
make the space which they fill comparatively 
opaque; they fill it like mist forms. The sec- - 
ond species of colors consists of those which 
are, as it were, light itself. They light up the 


THE THREE WORLDS 187 


space which they fill so that it becomes itself, 
through them, a shining or lighted space. ‘The 
third kind of color phenomena is quite differ- 
ent from these two. They have a raying, 
sparkling, glittering character. They fill 
space not merely with light but with glisten- 
ing, glittering rays. There is’ something 
active and inherently mobile in these colors. 
The others are somewhat quiet and lack 
brilliance. These on the contrary continu- 
ously produce themselves out of themselves, 
as it were. By the two first species of colors, 
the space is filled up with a subtle fluid which 
remains quietly in it. By the third it is filled 
with life ever enflaming itself anew with 
never-resting activity. 

Now these three species of colors are not 
ranged, as it were, strictly alongside each 
other in the human aura; they are not each 
enclosed in a separate section of space. On 
the contrary, they interpenetrate and suffuse 
each other in the most varied ways. One can 
see all three species playing through each other 
in one region of the aura, just as one can simul- 
taneously hear and see a physical body such 
as a bell. The aura thereby becomes an 


188 THEOSOPHY 


exceedingly complicated phenomenon, for one 
has, as it were, to do with three auras within 
each other and interpenetrating each other. 
One can, however, overcome the difficulty by 
directing one’s attention to the three species 
alternately. One then does in the supersen- 
sible world something similar to what one 
does in the sensible, for example, when one 
closes one’s eyes in order to give oneself up 
fully to the impression of a piece of music. 
The “seer” has, as it were, three different 
organs for the three species of colors. And, in 
order to observe undisturbed, he can open or 
close to impressions any one of the organs. As 
a rule only the one kind of organ can at first 
be developed by a “seer,” namely for the first 
kind of colors. A person at this stage can see 
only the one aura. The other two remain 
invisible to him. In the same way a person 
may be accessible to impressions from the two 
first but not the third. The higher stage of the 
“sift of seeing” consists in a person’s being 
able to see all three auras and, for the purpose 
of study, to direct his attention to the one or 
the other. 

The threefold aura is the supersensibly 


THE THREE WORLDS 189 


visible expression of the being of man. The 
three members, body, soul, and spirit,come to 
expression in it. 

The first aura is a mirror of the influence 
which the body exercises on the soul of man; 
the second signifies the life of the soul itself, 
the soul that has raised itself above what affects 
the senses directly, but is not yet devoted to the 
service of the eternal; the third mirrors the 
lordship which the eternal spirit has won over 
the transitory man. When descriptions of the 
aura are given, as here, it must be emphasized 
that these things are not only difficult to observe 
but above all difficult to describe. No one, 
therefore, should see in a description like this 
anything more than a stimulus to thought. 

The “seer” therefore can judge the stage 
of development of a person by the nature of 
his aura. When an undeveloped person 
approaches him, one who is given up entirely 
to his impulses, passions, and momentary 
external incitements, he sees the first aura in 
the loudest colors. The second, on the con- 
trary, is only slightly developed. He sees in 
it only scanty color formations, while the third 
is barely indicated. Only, here and there, a 


190 THEOSOPHY 


small, glittering spark of color shows itself, 
indicating that even in this human being the 
eternal already lives as a germ, but that it will 
require a long course of evolution, extending 
Over many incarnations, before it can gain a 
predominating influence on the outer life of 
its bearer. The more the man puts from him 
his lower impulses, the less obtrusive becomes 
the first part of the aura. The second part 
grows larger and larger, filling the color body 
within which the physical man lives, ever 
more and more completely, with its illumin- 
ing force. And the highly developed persons, 
“Servants of the Eternal,” show the wonderful 
third aura, that part which bears witness how 
far the human being has become a citizen of 
the spiritual world. For the divine Self rays 
through this part of the human aura into the 
earthly world. Persons in whom this aura is 
_ developed are the flames through whom the 
Divine illumines this world. They have 
learned to live not for themselves but for the 
eternally True, the nobly Beautiful and Good; 
they have wrung from their narrower self the — 
power to offer themselves up on the altar of 

the great World Work. 


THE THREE WORLDS IQI 


Thus there comes to expression in the aura 
what the man has made of himself in the 
course of his incarnations. 

All three parts of the aura contain colors of 
the most varied shades. But the character of 
these shades changes with the stage of devel- 
opment of the man. One can see in the first 
part of the aura of the undeveloped man of 
impulse all shades from red to blue. With 
him these shades have a dull, dirty character. 
The obtrusive red shades point to the sensual 
desires, to the fleshly lusts, to the passion for 
the enjoyments of the palate and the stomach. 
Green shades appear to be found especially in 
those lower natures that incline to obtuseness 
and indifference, greedily giving themselves 
over to each enjoyment but nevertheless shun- 
ning the exertions necessary to satisfy them. 
Where the desires are passionately bent on 
any goal beyond the reach of the capacities 
already acquired, brownish-green and yellow- 
ish-green colors appear. Certain modern 
modes of life actually breed this kind of aura. 

A personal conceit which is entirely rooted 
in low inclinations, that is to say the lowest 
stage of egoism, shows itself in tones from 


192 THEOSOPHY 


dirty yellow to brown. Now it is clear that 
even the animal life of impulse can take on a 
pleasing character. There is a purely natural 
capacity for self-sacrifice, a high form of 
which is to be found in the animal kingdom. 
This development of an animal impulse finds 
its most beautiful consummation in the natural 
mother love. These selfless natural impulses 
come to expression in the first aura in light 
reddish to rose-red shades of color. Cowardly 
fear and timidity in the face of external causes 
show themselves in the aura in brown-blue and 
gray-blue colors. 

The second aura also shows the most varied 
grades of colors. Brown and orange colored 
formations point to strongly developed conceit, 
pride, and ambition. Inquisitiveness also 
announces its presence through red-yellow 
flecks. A bright yellow mirrors clear think- 
ing and intelligence, green expresses under- 
standing of life and the world. Children who 
learn easily have much green in this part of 
their aura. A green yellow in the second 
aura seems to betoken a good memory. Rose- 
red indicates a well-meaning affectionate . 
nature. Blue is the sign of piety. The more 


THE THREE WORLDS 193 


the piety approaches to religious fervor, the 
more does blue pass over into violet. Ideal- 
ism and an earnest view of life in a higher 
sense one sees as indigo blue. 

The fundamental colors of the third aura 
are yellow, green, and blue. YELLOW appears 
here if the thinking is filled with lofty, wide- 
reaching ideas that comprehend the details 
as part of the whole of the divine World 
Order. If the thinking is intuitive and is also 
completely purified of all conceptions spring- 
ing from the world of the senses, the yellow 
has a golden brilliance. _GREEN indicates love 
toward all beings; BLUE is the sign of a capac- 
ity for selfless sacrifice for all beings. If this 
capacity for sacrifice is brought to the height 
of the strong Willing, which devotes itself to 
the active service of the world, the blue bright- 
ens to light violet. If pride and desire for 
honor as last remnants of personal egoism are 
still present in a more highly developed per- 
son there appear beside the yellow shades oth- 
ers verging on orange. It must, however, be 
remarked that in THIS part of the aura the 
colors are very different from the shades one 


194 THEOSOPHY 


is accustomed to see in the world of the senses. 
It displays to the “seer” a beauty and an exalt- 
edness with which nothing in the ordinary 
world can be compared. 


CHAPTER IV 
THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE 


KNOWLEDGE of the truths made known by 
Theosophy can be gained by EACH man for 
himself. Descriptions of the kind given in this 
book present a thought-picture of the higher 
worlds. And they are in a particular respect 
the FIRST STEP toward personal vision. For 
man is a thought-being. He can only find his 
path of knowledge when he makes thinking 
his starting point. A picture of the higher 
worlds given to his intellect is not unfruitful 
for him even if for the time being it were 
only as an account of higher facts into which 
he has not yet gained insight through his own 
vision. For the thoughts which are given him 
represent in themselves a force which con- 
tinues working in his thought world. This 
force will be active in him, and it will awaken 
slumbering capacities. He who is of the 
opinion that it is superfluous to make oneself 
receptive to such a thought-picture is mistaken. 


195 


196 THEOSOPHY 


He regards thought as something unreal and 
abstract. But thought is a living force. It 
is for him who has the higher knowledge a 
direct expression of what can be seen in the 
Spirit, and it therefore acts in him to whom it 
is communicated like a GERM, which brings 
forth from itself the fruit of knowledge. 

Anyone disdaining the application of strenu- 
ous intellectual exertion to the attainment of 
the higher knowledge, and preferring to make 
use of other forces in man to that end, fails to 
take into account that thinking is the highest 
of the faculties possessed by man in the world 
of the senses. 

To him who asks, “How can I gain per- 
sonal knowledge of the higher truths of The- 
osophy?” the answer must be given, “Begin by 
making yourself acquainted with what is com- 
municated d by others concerning “such—truths.” 
And should he reply, ‘‘I wish to see for myself, 
I donot wish to a _anything about what 
others have seen,” one must answer, “It i is in 
the very assimilating | of the communications 
of_others that the first step toward personal 


knowledge consists.” And if he _ should 


answer, “Then I am forced to have blind faith 


THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE 197 


to begin with,” one can only reply that in 
regard to something communicated it is not a 
case of belief or unbelief but merely of an 
unprejudiced consideration of what one hears. 
The theosophist never speaks with the inten- 
tion of awakening blind faith in what he says. 
He merely says, “I have experienced this in 
the higher regions of existence, and I narrate 
these my experiences.” But he knows also 
that the reception of these experiences by 
another and the penetrating of his thoughts 
with such an account are living forces making 
for spiritual development. 

One cannot, in fact, emphasize strongly 
enough how necessary it is that anyone who 
wishes to develop his capacity for higher 
knowledge should undertake the earnest 
cultivation of his powers of thinking. This 
emphasis must be all the stronger because 
many persons who wish to become “seers” 
actually estimate lightly this earnest, self-deny- 
ing labor of thinking. They say, “Thinking 
cannot help me to reach anything; the chief 
thing is ‘sensation, feeling,’ or something simi- 
lar.” In reply it must be said that no one 
can in the higher sense (and that means in 


198 THEOSOPHY 


truth) become a “seer” who has not previously 
accustomed himself to the life of trained 
thought. In this connection a certain inner 
laziness plays an injurious role with many 
persons. They do not become conscious of 
this laziness because it clothes itself in a con- 
tempt of “abstract thought” and “idle specu- 
lations,” etc. 

But one completely misunderstands what 
thinking is if one confuses it with a spinning 
of idle, abstract trains of thought. For while 
this “abstract thinking” can easily kill super- 
sensible knowledge, vigorous thinking, full of 
life, must be the groundwork on which it is 
based. 

It would indeed be more comfortable if one 
could reach the higher power of seeing while 
shunning the labor of thinking. Many would 
like this. But in order to reach it there is 
necessary an inner firmness, an assurance of 
soul to which thinking alone can lead. Other- 
wise there merely results a meaningless flick- 


ering of pictures here and there, a distracting . 


display of soul or astral phenomena, which 
indeed gives pleasure to many, but which has 
nothing to do with a true penetration into the 


THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE 199 


higher worlds. Further, if one considers what 
great changes take place in the man who 
really enters the higher world, one will under- 
stand that the matter has still another aspect. 
Absolute HEALTHINESS of the soul life belongs 
to the condition of being a “seer.” There is 
no better means of developing this healthiness 
than the true kind of thinking. In fact, it is 
possible for the health to suffer seriously if the 
exercises for higher development are not based 
on thinking. Although it is true that the 
power of spiritual sight makes a healthy and 
correctly thinking man still healthier and 
more capable in life, it is also true that vague 
dreamings about these things, all attempts to 
develop while shirking the effort of thought, 
are dangerous to the health both of body and 
soul. No one who wishes to develop himself 
to higher knowledge has anything to fear if he 
pay heed to what is said here, but the attempt 
should only be made under the above condi- 
tions. 

Unfounded disbelief is injurious. It works 
in the recipient as a repelling force. It hin- 
ders him from receiving the fructifying 
thoughts. Not faith, but just this reception 


200 THEOSOPHY 


of the theosophic conceptions and teachings, 
is the requisite for the development of the 
higher senses. The theosophist approaches 
his scholar with the injunction, “You are NOT 
required to BELIEVE what I tell you but to think 
about it, make it part of the contents of your 
own thought world, then my thoughts will 
work in you and of themselves enable you to 
recognize them as true.” This is the attitude 
of the teacher of Theosophy. He gives the 
stimulus; the power to accept as true what is 
given him springs forth from the inner being 
of the learner himself. And it is with this 
attitude of mind that the theosophic views of 
life should be studied. Anyone who has the 
self-control to steep his thoughts in them may 
be sure that in a shorter or longer time they 
will lead him to personal vision. 

In what has been said here there is already 
indicated one of the first qualities which every- 
one wishing to arrive at a personal vision of 
higher facts has to develop. It is the UNRE- 
SERVED, UNPREJUDICED, LAYING OF ONESELF 
OPEN to that which is revealed by human 
beings or the world external to man. If a 
man approaches a fact in the world around 


THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE 201 


him with a judgment arising from his previ- 
ous experiences, he shuts himself off by this 
judgment from the quiet, complete effect 
which this fact can have on him. ,The learner 
must be able each moment to make himself a 
perfectly empty vessel-into-which the new 
world flows. Knowledge is received only-in 
those moments in which every judgment, every 

criticism coming from ourselves, is silent. For. 
‘example, when we meet a person, the question 
is not at all whether-we-are-wiser than-he. 

Even the most unreasoning child has something 
to reveal to the greatest sage. And if he 
approach the child with his prejudgment, be 
it ever so wise, he pushes his wisdom like a 
dulled glass in front of what the child ought 
to reveal to him. Complete inner selflessness 
is necessary for this constant accessibility to 
the revelations of the new world. And if a 
man test himself to find out in what degree 
he possesses this accessibility he will make 
astonishing discoveries regarding himself. 
Anyone who wishes to tread the path of higher 
knowledge must train himself to be able each 
moment to obliterate himself with all his 
prejudices. As long as he obliterates himself 





202 THEOSOPHY 


the other flows into him. Only a high grade 
of such selfless accessibility enables one to 
receive the higher spiritual facts which sur- 
round man on all sides. One can develop this 
capacity in oneself of set purpose. One tries, 
for example, to refrain from passing any judg- 
ment on people in one’s neighborhood. One 
should obliterate within oneself the gauge of 
good and bad, of stupid or clever, which one 
is accustomed to apply, and try without this 
gauge to understand persons purely through 
themselves. The best exercises can be made 
with people for whom one has an aversion. 
One should suppress this aversion with all 
one’s power and let everything that they do 
affect one unbiased. Or, if one is in an envi- 
ronment that excites this or that judgment, 
one should suppress the judgment and, free 
from criticism, lay oneself open to impres- 
sions. One should allow things and events to 
speak TO ONESELF rather than speak oneself 
about them. And one should extend this even 
to one’s thought world. One should suppress 
in ONESELF that which prompts this or that 
thought and allow only what is outside to pro- 
duce the thoughts. Only when such exer- 


THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE 203 


cises are carried out with holiest earnestness 
and perseverance, do they lead to the goal of 
higher knowledge. He who undervalues such 
exercises knows nothing of their worth. And 
he who has experience in such things knows 
that selfless accessibility and freedom from 
prejudice are true producers of force. Just 
as heat conducted to the steam boiler is trans- 
formed into the motive power of the engine, 
the habitual exercise of selfless, spiritual 
accessibility in man is transformed into the 
power of seeing in the spiritual worlds. 

By this exercise a man makes himself recep- 
tive to all that surrounds him. But to this 
receptivity correct valuation must also be 
added. As long as a man is inclined to value 
himself too highly, at the expense of the world 
around him, he closes up the approach to 
higher knowledge. He who in regard to 
each thing or event in the world yields him- 
self up to the pleasure or pain which they 
cause HIM, is enmeshed by such an overvalu- 
ation of himself. For through HIS pleasure 
and HIs pain he learns nothing about the things 
but merely something about himself. If I feel 
sympathy with a man, I feel to begin with 


204 THEOSOPHY 


nothing but my relation to him. If I make 
myself entirely dependent on this feeling of 
pleasure, of sympathy, as regards my judg- 
ment and my conduct, I place my personality 
in the foreground, | obtrude it upon the world. 
I wish to thrust myself into the world just as 
I am, instead of accepting the world in an 
unbiased way and allowing it to play itself 
out in accordance with the forces acting in it. 
In other words, I am tolerant only of what 
harmonizes with my personality. Toward 
everything else I exercise a repelling force. 
As long as a man is enmeshed by the sensible 
world, he acts in an especially repelling way 
on all influences that are supersensible. The 
learner must develop in himself the capacity 
to conduct himself toward things and people 
in accordance with their peculiar natures and 
to give to each its due worth and significance. 
Sympathy and antipathy, liking and disliking 
must be made to play quite new roles. There 
can be no thought of eradicating these, of 
blunting oneself to sympathy and antipathy. 
On the contrary, the more a man develops in 
himself the capacity to refrain from allowing 
each feeling of sympathy and antipathy to be 


THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE 205 


followed immediately by a judgment, an 
action, the more fine will be the sensitiveness 
he develops in himself. He will find that 
sympathy and antipathy of a higher kind 
awaken in him if he curb those which he 
already has. Even something that is at first 
most unattractive has hidden qualities; it 
reveals them if a man does not in his conduct 
obey his selfish feelings. He who has devel- 
oped himself in this respect feels more finely 
in every direction than one who has not, 
because he does not allow his own personality 
to lead him into lack of receptivity. Each 
inclination that a man follows blindly blunts 
the power to see the things in his environment 
in their true light. By obeying inclination we 
thrust ourselves, as it were, through the envi- 
ronment instead of laying ourselves open to it 
and feeling its true worth. 

A man becomes independent of the CHANG- 
ING impressions of the outer world when each 
pleasure and each pain, each sympathy and 
each antipathy, no longer calls forth in him 
an egotistical response and egotistical conduct. 
The pleasure one feels in a thing makes one at 
once dependent on it. One loses oneself in 


206 THEOSOPHY 


the thing. A man who loses himself in the 
pleasure or pain caused by each varying 
impression cannot tread the path of higher 
knowledge. He must accept pleasure and 
pain with EQUANIMITY. Then he ceases to lose 
himself in them; he begins instead to under- 
stand them. A pleasure to which I surrender 
myself devours my being in the moment of 
surrender. I ought to use the pleasure only 
in order through it to arrive at an understand- 
ing of the thing that arouses pleasure in me. 
The important point ought not to be that the 
thing has aroused the pleasure in me; I ought 
to experience the liking and through it the 
NATURE of the thing. The pleasure should 
only be an announcement to me that there is in 
the thing a quality calculated to give pleasure. 
This quality I must learn to understand. If 
I go no further than the pleasure, if I allow 
myself to be entirely absorbed in it, it is only 
that I am expending myself; if the pleasure is 
to me only the opportunity of experiencing a 
quality or property of the thing itself, I enrich 
my inner being through this experience. To 
the learner pleasure and displeasure, joy and- 
pain, must be OPPORTUNITIES for learning 


THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE 207 


about things. The learner does not become 
blunted to pleasure or pain through this, he 
raises himself above them in order that they 
may reveal to him the nature of the things. 
He who develops himself in this respect will 
learn to understand what instructors pleasure 
and pain are. He will feel with every being, 
and thereby receive the revelation of its inner 
nature. The learner never says to himself 
merely, “Oh, how I suffer” or “Oh, how glad I 
am,” but always “How suffering speaks! How 
joy speaks!” He eliminates the element of self 
in order that pleasure and joy from the outer 
world may work on him. By this means a com- 
plete change takes place in the man. Formerly 
he responded to this or that impression by this 
or that action, because these impressions 
caused him joy or dislike. But now he allows 
pleasure and displeasure to become merely the 
organs by which things tell him how he should 
conduct himself toward them. IN HIM, 
pleasure and pain change from being mere 
feelings to being organs of sense by which the 
external world is perceived. Just as the eye 
does not act itself when it sees something, but 
allows the hand to act, so pleasure and pain 


208 THEOSOPHY 


bring about nothing in the learner, but merely 
receive impressions; and what is learned 
through pleasure and displeasure is that 
which brings about the action. 

When a man uses pleasure and displeasure 
in such a way that they become mere organs 
of transmission, they build up for him within 
his soul the very organs through which the 
soul world opens up to view. The eye can 
serve the body only by being an organ for the 
transmission of sensible impressions; pleasure 
and pain become the eyes of the soul when 
they cease to have any value in themselves 
and begin to serve one purpose alone, that of 
revealing to the inner soul the souls outside it. 

By means of the faculties mentioned the 
seeker of the Path places himself in such a con- 
dition as to enable what is really present in the 
world around him to affect him without dis- 
turbing influences from his own personality. 
But he has also to adapt himself to the spirit- 
ual world around him in the right way. For 
he is, as thinking being, a citizen of the spir- 
itual world. He can be this in a right way 
only if he guides his thoughts in accordance 
with the eternal laws of truth, the laws of the 


THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE 209 


“Spirit-land.” For only in this way can that 
land act on him and reveal its facts to him. 
A man never reaches the truth as long as he 
yields to the thoughts continuously coursing 
through his ego. For if he does, his thoughts 
take a course imposed on them by the fact that 
they come into existence within the bodily 
nature. The thought world of a man who is 
absorbed in an intellectual activity, deter- 
mined primarily by his physical brain, has an 
appearance of irregularity and confusion. In 
it a thought enters, breaks off, is driven out 
of the field by another. Any one who tests this 
by listening to a conversation between two peo- 
ple, or who observes himself in an unpreju- 
diced way, will gain an idea of this mass of 
will-o’-the-wisp thoughts. As long as a man 
devotes himself only to the calls of the life of 
the senses, his confused succession of thoughts 
will always be brought into order again by the 
facts of the reality. I may think ever so con- 
fusedly, but in my actions everyday facts force 
upon me the laws corresponding to the reality. 
My mental picture of a town may be most con- 
fused, but if I wish to walk along a certain 
road in the town I must accommodate myself 


210 THEOSOPHY 


to existing facts. The mechanic can enter his 
workshop with ever so varied a whirl of ideas, 
but the laws of his engines compel him to 
adopt the correct procedure in his work. 
Within the world of the senses facts exercise 
their continuous corrective on thought. If I 
think out a false opinion about a physical 
phenomenon or the shape of a plant the reality 
confronts me and sets my thinking right. It 
is quite different when I consider my relations 
to the higher regions of existence. They 
reveal themselves to me only if I enter their 
worlds with already strictly controlled think- 
ing. Unless my thinking shows me the right, 
sure standpoint, I cannot find the proper paths. 
For the spiritual laws prevailing within these 
worlds are not condensed into the sensibly per- 
ceptible kind, and therefore they do not exert 
on me the compulsion referred to above. I am 
able to obey these laws only when they are 
related to those which govern me personally 
as a thinking being. Here I must be my own 
sure guide. The seeker of the Path must there- 
fore make his thinking strictly regulated in - 
character. His thoughts must by degrees dis- 
accustom themselves entirely from taking the 


THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE ail 


ordinary daily course. They must in their 
whole sequence take on the inner character of 
the spiritual world. 

The seeker of the Path must constantly keep 
watch over himself in this respect and have 
himself in hand. With him one thought must 
not link itself arbitrarily with another but 
only in the way that corresponds with the 
severely exact contents of the thought world. 
The transition from one idea to another must 
correspond with the strict laws of thought. He 
must as thinker be to a certain extent con- 
stantly a copy of these thought laws. He must 
shut out from his train of thought all that does 
not flow out of these laws. Should a favorite 
thought present itself to him, he must put it 
aside if the correct sequence will be disturbed 
by it. If a personal feeling tries to force upon 
his thoughts a direction not inherent in them, 
he must suppress it. Plato required of those 
who wished to be in his school that they 
should first go through a course of mathemat- 
ical training. And mathematics with their 
strict laws, which do not yield to the course of 
ordinary sensible phenomena, form a good 
preparation for the seeker of the Path. If he 


212 THEOSOPHY 


wishes to make progress in the study of mathe- 
matics he has to strike out all personal, arbi- 
trary choice, all disturbances. He learns by it 
to follow purely the requirements of the 
thought. And he has to learn to do this in all 
his thinking. His THOUGHT-LIFE must itself be 
a copy of the unchanging mathematical meth- 
ods of stating premises and forming con- 
clusions. He must strive wherever he goes and 
whatever he does to think after this manner. 
Then the intrinsic lawfulness of the spirit 
world will flow into him instead of passing 
over and through him without leaving a trace, 
as it does when his thinking bears the ordinary 
confused character. Regulated thinking 
brings him from sure starting points to the 
most hidden truths. What has been said, 
however, must not be looked at in a one-sided 
way. Although mathematics act as a good 
discipline for the mind, one can arrive at pure, 
healthy thinking without the study of mathe- 
matics. 

And what the Path seeker strives to have in 
his thinking, he must also strive to have in his ~ 
actions. These must obey the laws of the nobly 
Beautiful and the eternally True without any 


THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE 213 


disturbing influences from his personality. 
These laws must constantly direct him. 
Should he begin to do something that he has 
recognized as right and fail to content his 
personal feelings, he may not FOR THAT REASON 
forsake the road he has entered on. But, on 
the other hand, he may not pursue it because 
it gives him joy if he finds that it is not in 
accordance with the laws of the eternally 
Beautiful and True. In everyday life peo- 
ple allow their actions to be decided by what 
contents them personally, by what bears fruit 
FOR THEMSELVES. In this way they force 
upon the course of the world’s events a direc- 
tion influenced by their personality. They 
do not bring to realization the True that is 
already prescribed in the laws of the spirit 
world, they realize the demands of their self- 
will. They act in harmony with the spiritual 
world only when they follow its laws alone. 
The Path seeker may not ask, “What brings 
me advantages, what will bring me success?” 
but only, “What have I recognized as the 
Good?” Renunciation of the fruits of action 
in the interest of his personality, renunciation 
of all self-will, these are the weighty laws 


214 THEOSOPHY 


which he must prescribe for himself. Then 
he treads the paths of the spiritual world, his 
whole being becomes penetrated by these laws. 
He becomes free from all compulsion from 
the sensible world; his Spirit-man raises itself 
out of the sensible sheath. Thus he makes 
actual progress on the path toward the spirit- 
ual, and thus he spiritualizes himself. One 
cannot say, “Of what use to me are all my 
resolutions to follow purely the laws of the 
True when I am perhaps mistaken as to what 
is the True?” The important thing is the 
striving and the spirit in which one strives. 
Even he who is mistaken possesses in his very 
striving after the True a force which turns 
him away from the wrong road. This force 
seizes him should he be mistaken and guides 
him to the right road. The very objection, 
“But I can be mistaken,” is itself harmful 
unbelief. It shows that the man has no con- 
fidence in the power of the True. For the 
important point is that he should not presume 
to decide on his aims and objects in life in 
accordance with his egotistical views, but that” 
he should selflessly yield himself up to the 
guidance of the spirit itself. It is not the 


THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE 215 


self-seeking will of man that can prescribe for 
the True; on the contrary THIS TRUE ITSELF 
must become lord in man, must penetrate his 
whole being, make him a copy of the eternal 
laws of the Spirit-land. He must fill himself 
with these eternal laws in order to let them 
stream out into life. As the Path seeker must 
hold strict guard over his thinking, so must 
he also over his WILL. Through this he 
becomes in life a messenger from the world of 
the True and the Beautiful. And through 
becoming this he rises to be a participant in 
the spirit world. Through this he is raised 
from stage to stage of development. For one 
cannot reach the spiritual life by merely see- 
ing it; on the contrary, one has to reach it by 
experiencing, by living it. 

If the Path seeker observes the laws here 
described his soul experiences will take on an 
entirely new form. He will not longer live 
merely IN THEM. They will no longer have 
a significance merely for his personal life. 
They will develop into soul perceptions of the 
higher world. In his soul the feelings of pleas- 
ure and displeasure, of joy and pain, grow into 
soul organs, just as in his body eyes and ears 


216 THEOSOPHY 


do not lead a life for themselves merely, but 
selflessly allow external impressions to pass 
through them. As a result CALMNESS and 
ASSURANCE become inherent qualities in the 
soul of the Path seeker. A great pleasure will 
no longer make him jubilant, but will be the 
messenger to him of qualities in the world 
which have hitherto escaped him. It will 
leave him calm, and through the calm the 
characteristics of the pleasure-giving beings 
will reveal themselves to him. Pain will 
no longer fill him with grief, but will tell him 
the qualities of the being which causes the 
pain. Just as the eye does not desire any- 
thing for itself but shows man the direction of 
the road he has to take, so will pleasure and 
pain guide the soul safely along its path. 
This is the state of balance of soul which the 
Path seeker must reach. The less pleasure 
and pain exhaust themselves in waves which 
they throw up in the inner life of the Path 
seeker, the more will they form eyes for the 
supersensible world. As long as a man lives 
in pleasure and pain he cannot GAIN KNOWL- © 
EDGE through them. When he learns through 
them how to live, when he withdraws from 


THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE 217 


them his feeling of self, then they become his 
organs of perception, then he sees by means 
of them, and through them attains to knowl- 
edge. It is incorrect to think that the Seeker 
of the Path becomes a. dry, colorless being, 
incapable of pleasure or suffering. Pleasure 
and suffering are present in him but in a trans- 
formed shape; they have become “eyes and 
ears.” 

So long as one lives in a personal relation- 
ship with the world, things reveal only that 
which links them with our personality. But 
that is the transitory part of them. If we 
withdraw ourselves from the transitory part 
of us and live with our feeling of self, with our 
“J,” in our permanent part, then our transi- 
tory parts become intermediaries for us; and 
that which reveals itself through them is an 
Imperishable, an Eternal in the things. This 
relationship between HIS own Eternal and 
the Eternal in the things must be estab- 
lished by the seeker of the Path. Even before 
he begins other exercises of the kind described, 
and also during them, he should direct his 
thought to this imperishable part. When 
I observe a stone, a plant, an animal, a man, I 


218 THEOSOPHY 


should remember that in each of them an Eter- 
nal declares itself. J must ask myself what 
is the permanent that lives in the transitory 
stone, what will outlast the transient, sensible 
phenomenon? One ought not to think that 
such a directing of the spirit to the eternal 
destroys the power of devoted observation and 
our feeling for the qualities of everyday 
affairs, and estranges us from the immediate 
realities. On the contrary every leaf, every 
little insect will unveil to us innumerable mys- 
teries, when not our EYES only but THROUGH 
THE EYES the spirit is directed upon them. 
Every sparkle, every shade of color, every 
cadence will remain vividly perceptible to 
the senses; nothing will be lost; only an infini- 
tude is gained. Indeed, the person who is not 
able to observe even the meanest thing in 
nature with interest will only attain to pale, 
bloodless thoughts, not to spiritual sight. All 
depends on the ATTITUDE OF MIND we acquire 
in this direction. 

What stage we will succeed in reaching 
depends on our capacities. We have each 
moment to do what is right and leave every- 
thing else to the future. It must be enough 


THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE 219 


for us at first to direct our minds to the perma- 
nent. If we do this the knowledge of the per- 
manent will THROUGH THIS awaken in us. We 
must wait until it is given. And it is given 
at the right time to each one who with patience 
waits and works. A man soon notices during 
such exercises what a powerful transformatio 

takes place within him. He learns to conside 

each thing as important or unimportant only 
in so far as he recognizes it to be related to 
a Permanent, to an Eternal. He comes to a 
different appreciation and estimate of the 
world from the one he has hitherto had. His 
whole feeling takes on a new relationship 
toward the entire surrounding world. The 
transitory no longer attracts him for its own 
sake as formerly; it becomes for him a member, 
an image of the Eternal. And this Eternal, 
that lives in all things, he learns to\lova It 
becomes familiar to him, just 4 ansitory 
was formerly familiar to him. This again 
does not cause him to become estranged from 
life, he only learns to value each thing at its 
true worth. Even the vain trifles of life will 
not leave him quite unaffected; but the man 
no longer loses himself in them, he recognizes 


220 THEOSOPHY 


them at their limited worth. He sees them in 
their true light. He is a poor discerner who 
prefers to go awandering in the clouds and 
lose sight of life; a true discerner from his 
high summit, with his power of clear survey 
and his just and healthy feeling for every- 
thing, will be able to assign to each thing its 
proper place. 

In this way there opens out to the Path 
seeker the possibility of ceasing to obey the 
incalculable influences of the external world 
of the senses, which turn his will now here, 
now there. Through higher knowledge he has 
seen the Eternal Being in things. By means 
of the transformation of his inner world he 
has gained the capacity to perceive this eternal 
being. When he now acts from out himself, 
he acts also from out the Eternal Being of the 
things. For the things give utterance IN HIM 
to this being of theirs. He therefore acts in 
harmony with the eternal World Order when 
he directs his action from out the Eternal liv- 
ing within him. He becomes in this way no 
longer impelled by the things, he impels them 
according to the laws implanted within them 
which have become the laws of his own being. 


THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE 221 


This ability to act from out his inner being 
can only be an ideal toward which one strives. 
The attainment of the goal lies in the far dis- 
tance. But the Path seeker must have the will 
to tread this road. This is his WILL FOR FREE- 
DOM. For freedom is action from out of one’s 
inner being. And only he may act from out of 
his inner being who draws his motives from 
the Eternal. He who does not do this acts 
according to other motives than those 
implanted in the things. Such a one opposes 
the World Order. And this must prevail 
against him. ‘That is to say, what he plans 
to carry through by his will can not take place. 
He can not become free. The arbitrary choice 
of the individual annihilates itself through the 
effects of its deeds. 
*% * * 

He who directs his inner life in such a 
way steps upward from stage to stage. The 
fruits of his exercises will be that certain vistas 
of the supersensible world will unfold to his 
spiritual perception. He learns the real mean- 
ing of the truth communicated about this 
world; and he will receive confirmation of 
them through his own experience. If this 


222 THEOSOPHY 


stage is reached, an experience comes to him 
which can only be his through treading this 
path. 

Through Beings whose significance can now 
for the first time become clear to him through 
the “great Guides of the Human Race” there 
is bestowed on him what is called consecration 
(initiation). He becomes a “Disciple of the 
Wisdom.” What the Seeker of the Path now 
experiences can only be indicated here. He 
receives anew home. He becomes a conscious 
dweller in the supersensible world. The River 
of Wisdom flows to him now from a higher 
source. The Light of Knowledge from this 
time forth does not shine upon him from with- 
out; he is himself placed in the fountain eye 
of this Light. In it the problems which the 
world supplies are solved. Henceforth he 
holds converse no longer with the things which 
are shaped through the spirit, but with the 
Shaping Spirit itself. The separate life of 
the personality only exists now in order to be a 
conscious image of the Eternal. Every linger- 
ing doubt that could formerly arise in him 
vanishes; for only he can doubt whom things 
delude regarding the spirit that rules in them. 


THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE 223 


And since the “Disciple of the Wisdom” is 
able to hold intercourse with the spirit itself, 
each false form in which he had before imag- 
ined the spirit vanishes. The false form 
which man ascribes to the spirit in his concep- 
tions is superstition. The initiate is above 
all superstition, for he knows what the true 
form of the spirit is. FREEDOM from person- 
ality, doubt, and superstition, these are the 
characteristics of him who has attained to 
discipleship in the Path of the higher knowl- 
edge. One must not confuse this state in which 
the personality becomes one with the compre- 
hensive spirit of life with a DISAPPEARANCE OF 
THE PERSONALITY in the “All-Spirit.” Such 
a disappearance does not take place in a true 
development of the personality. It remains 
preserved as personality at the highest stage 
of its perfection. Itis not the subjection of the 
personality but its highest development that 
takes place. If one wishes to have a simile for 
this coincidence or union of the individual 
spirit with the “All-Spirit” one cannot choose 
that of different circles which, coinciding, are 
lost in the One, but one must choose the pic- 
ture of many circles of which each has a quite 


224 THEOSOPHY 


distinct shade of color; these differently col- 
ored circles coincide, but EACH separate shade 
preserves its existence within the whole. Not 
one loses the fullness of its individual power, 
and the whole is the resultant of these individ- 
ual powers. 

The further description of the Path will not 
be given here. It is given so far as is possible 
in “Occult Science,” which forms a continu- 
ation of this book. 

The Way of Man passes through many lives 
(incarnations). PATIENCE ought to flow out 
of the real understanding of this fact. He 
who uses his present incarnation for his devel- 
opment prepares for those stages in which he 
will attain to (intuitive) seeing, to clairvoy- 
ance, to the full possession of his higher being 
(Spirit-self, Life-spirit) as well as to the 
remembrance of his former lives and to still 
higher experiences. It is possible for this to 
take place in his present life or perhaps, it 
may be, in a following one. 


THE END 


> 


NOTES AND AMPLIFICATIONS 


1. To page 23. To speak of “life-force” 
(Lebenskraft) was regarded a short time back 
as the mark of an unscientific mind. But one 
begins to find here and there in science to-day 
a tendency which is not averse from the idea 
of a “life-force’ such as was accepted in 
former times. Anyone who really understands 
the course of contemporary science will, how- 
ever, recognize that the superior logic lies with 
those who in considering this tendency refuse 
to find any trace of “life-force.” ‘“Life-force” 
is by no means the same as what is to-day 
called the “forces of nature (Naturkrafte),” 
and he who will not pass over from the modes 
of thought and conception characteristic of 
modern science to higher modes ought not to 
speak of “life-force.” Only the mode of think- 
ing and the presuppositions of spiritual science 
' (Geisteswissenschaft) or Theosophy make it 
possible to deal with such things without 
inconsistency. 

225 


226 THEOSOPHY 


2. To page 26. When the “sense of touch” 
of the lower organisms is spoken of here, it is 
not intended to convey what is expressed by 
this phrase in the ordinary expositions of the 
“Senses.” From the theosophical point of 
view much could, in fact, be urged in objec- 
tion to the use of this expression. What is 
meant here by “sense of touch” is rather a GEN- 
ERAL BECOMING AWARE of an external impres- 
sion, in contrast to the SPECIAL becoming 
aware which consists in seeing, hearing, etc. 

3. Topage35. Itis necessary to read theo- 
sophical presentations of a subject with strict 
accuracy. For it is only in the accurate state- 
ment of ideas that they have a value. For 
example in the statement, “They (the sensa- 
tions, etc.) do not in its case (namely, that of 
the animal) become interwoven with inde- 
pendent thoughts transcending the immediate 
experience,” one could easily fall into the 
mistake of thinking that it was claimed here 
that there are no thoughts contained in the sen- 
sations or the instincts of animals. Now The- 
osophy is actually based on a knowledge which ~ 
says that all inner experience on the part of 
animals (and all existence of any kind) is 


NOTES AND AMPLIFICATIONS 227 


interwoven with thought. But the thoughts 
of the animal are not those of an independent 
I, or ego, living in the animal, but are those of 
the animal group ego, which must be regarded 
as a being governing the animal from without. 
This group ego is not present in the physical 
world as is the I, or ego, of a man, but works 
down into the animal from the soul world 
described on pages 87 et seg. (Further details 
regarding this are to be found in my “Outline 
of Occult Science.”) The real point at issue 
in the case of man is that thoughts attain 
to an independent existence IN HIM—that 
thoughts are not experienced immediately in 
sensation, but mediately as thoughts which are 
experienced also in the soul. 

4. To page 42. When it is said that little 
children say, “Charles is good,” “Mary wishes 
to have this,” it must be carefully noted that 
the important point is not so much how soon 
children use the word “I” but when they con- 
nect the proper conception with that word. 
When children hear adults use the word, they 
can continually use it without having the con- 
ception of the “I.” Nevertheless, the fact that 
the use of the word begins late as a rule points 


228 THEOSOPHY 


to an important feature of evolution, namely 
the gradual unfolding of the I-concept out of 
the vague I-feeling. 

5. To pages 47 and 48. A description of 
the intrinsic nature of “Intuition” is to be 
found in my books “A Way of Initiation” and 
“Occult Science.” One might through inac- 
curate observation of the matter detect a con- 
tradiction between the use of this word in those 
books and what is said in this book on page 47. 
This, however, will be found not to exist when 
one takes into account that what reveals itself 
through intuition in full reality to supersen- 
sible knowledge makes itself known, in its 
LOWEST revelation, to the spirit-self, even as 
the external existence of the physical world 
makes itself known in sensation. 

6. To page 91. The subject of the spirit- 
ual organs of perception which is only alluded 
to shortly in the later chapter in this book on 
The Path of Knowledge, is more fully dealt 
with in my books “A Way of Initiation” and 
“Occult Science.” (Berlin, Phtlosophisch- 
Theosophischer Verlag. Motz Strasse 17.) 

7. To page 132. It would be incorrect to 
imagine a ceaseless UNREST in the spiritual 


NOTES AND AMPLIFICATIONS 229 


world because there is not in it “a state of 
rest, a remaining in one place, as in the phys- 
ical world.” There, where the Beings are who 
create the Archetypes, there is not indeed 
what can be called “rest in one place,” but 
there is that rest which is spiritual in its 
nature, and consistent with active mobility. It 
may be likened to the restful satisfaction and 
bliss of the spirit which is revealed in deeds 
and not in a state of inaction. 

8. To page 139. One is obliged to use the 
word “Purposes” in regard to the impelling 
or motive Powers of the world evolution, 
although it opens the door to a temptation to 
conceive of these Powers simply as human 
purposes. In the case of such words—which 
had naturally to be taken from the sphere of 
human life—this temptation can be averted 
only by the raising of oneself when using them 
to a significance from which every connection 
with human limitation is banished, and there 
is assigned to them what man approximately 
imbues them with on those occasions in his 
life when he, to a certain degree, rises above 
himself. 

9. To page 139. Further particulars in 


230 THEOSOPHY 


regard to the “Spiritual Word” are to be found 
in my “Outline of Occult Science.” 


MUNICH, August 28, 1910. 








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